When the Grande Cretto of Gibellina debuted on Domus

Razed to the ground by the earthquake that devastated the Belìce Valley on January 14, 1968, the Sicilian town of Gibellina was rebuilt from scratch, about 20 kilometers away, under the impetus of Mayor Ludovico Corrao, who chose to focus on a dream team of architects and artists to create a new thriving life for the settlement: among many others, Pietro Consagra, Vittorio Gregotti, Alessandro Mendini, Fausto Melotti, Franco Purini and Laura Thermes, Oswald Mathias Ungers, Nanda Vigo participated to the endeavor. Then came Alberto Burri.  Already engaged in a research on materic realizations he called Cretti (clefts), the artist arrived in Gibellina in 1984, when the work on the new town had been going on for 5 years already (after the population had been displaced in prefab shacks for more than 10 years): he then chose to intervene on the old town, cementing its rubble into a Grande Cretto (Great Cleft) of about one hectare, a landscape installation that, by recalling the memory of the village that non longer existed, wanted to bring life back to where it used to flow. “It is a place that acclimatizes the mind; it is as humble and naked as the world was in the beginning” which has predictably become the inspiration and setting for a large number of films, videos and visual projects, the Grande Cretto made its appearance on Domus issue 698 in October 1988, while nearing the end of its first phase of construction.

Monuments can be looked at by day or by night. The night however is more generous in miracles. The Cleft at Gibellina is white and bright in the moonlight. Alberto Burri has wound it along a natural slope, the same slope formerly inhabited by the ancient town of Gibellina before the vicious earthquake destroyed it. It is wide, on the scale of a small town and situated, like all peasant towns, in the most comfortable place. It gets the sun, but not too much; the wind blows upon it, but gently enough; there is silence. The word “cretto” in Italian means “a not very wide crack in walls, in metals” or, more loosely, the parchmenting of skin and the splitting of trees. Elements of mother nature and of “mother denatured” are liable, therefore, to suffer this scourge, this unkind erosion.

The cleft, in theory, cannot be born a cleft, but can only become one. This great sculpture on the land is thus totally out of tune with reason but, where there’s rebellion there’s invention. The gigantic Sicilian fissure measures roughly ten hectares and is about to be completed. It is composed of numerous blocks of white concrete 1.6 metres high, a little less than the stature of a Mediterranean man. The megalithic segments tortuously, and with dark patches of shade from the great heat, describe the contours of the whole hillside. There are traces of the old Roman road, of the roads that were there before. But there are also fresh subterranean passages, spontaneous geometric regraftings. There are, here and elsewhere, three possible views: from the air, from close-up, and from the entrance, like ants, in the concrete coves. From the air, the cleft appears frozen, standing out against any other element of the ground. It looks like a vast rent or polished tombstone. From close-up, it is a robotic body, dazzling to the eyes, a maze whose coordinates can easily be lost. The warmest and also the most mystic vision is that afforded from the inside, on our own human scale. 

There is a proportional loss and the whole of reality and its borders can be measured at arm’s length, in white concrete. If something rolls it sounds like a landslide. It is a place that acclimatizes the mind; it is as humble and naked as the world was in the beginning. The superfluous is eliminated and absolute stillness reigns; every event becomes the event. If the owl hoots a presentiment can be felt, if gatherings of men walk there with torches, it is like being at Troy. Gibellina endured the torture of destruction; it was Troy, it was Dresden. Now Gibellina has this new graft: wherever man shows this puerile obstinacy: where there is rubble man must build. And life must go on.