Cretto di Burri
The Cretto di Burri, also known as cretto di Gibellina, is the name by which the Grande Cretto is colloquially known, a work of environmental art created by Alberto Burri between 1984 and 1989 in the place where the old town of Gibellina stood, completely destroyed by the 1968 Belice earthquake.
The power of the earthquake it completely destroyed the city, but the desire for a rebirth of the city was born from the mind of the mayor Ludovico Corrao, who saw in art a social redemption of the city; among the numerous artists who came to the city free of charge, the name of Burri stood out.
Burri designed a gigantic monument that traces the streets and alleys of the old city: in fact it stands in the same place where a once there were rubble, now cemented by the work of Burri; the blocks were made by accumulating and caging the rubble of the buildings themselves. From above, the work appears as a series of concrete fractures on the ground, whose artistic value lies in the freezing of the historical memory of a country. Each slit is two to three meters wide, while the blocks are about one meter and sixty high and cover an area of about 80,000 square meters, making it one of the largest contemporary works of art in the world.
