In Western Sicily you are surrounded by hills, scattered houses, the occasional sheep. It’s all quaint until an unexpected modern town crops up. Civilization ends abruptly past the streets of Gibellina Nuova, a ghost town the locals refuse to inhabit. Instead, there resides a sense of depression, a feeling of whimsy, even beauty. The town was realized from the 70s until 2019, after the 1968 Belice earthquake destroyed the baroque town of Gibellina. Until recently, some citizens lived in containers. A group of architects including Oswald Mathias Ungers, Francesco Venezia, Ludovico Quaroni, and artists Alberto Burri, Mimmo Paladino, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Joseph Beuys, and Richard Long created the new town 11 kilometers from the original site. They filled Gibellina Nuova with the highest density of public art in Italy. 

The exhibition in the town’s art museum elucidates the gap between concept and residents: Photos show an emotional Beuys wandering the town’s remains; “The Night of Gibellina” by Sicilian artist Renato Guttuso is an eerie scene: starry sky, burning buildings, faceless people with torches. Pristine models show the old and new town. But neither in the exhibition nor in the realized town are there traces of the Gibellinians. The vernacular, grown Sicilian town is gone. In its place a modernist concept was brutally imposed. 

As you walk from the museum to the city center, it is eerily quiet. Some buildings were never finished. The theater is a Brutalist landmark with only its outer shell poured. The deserted square, Sistema delle Piazze, is nothing short of a postmodern de Chirico painting. But the strongest symbol of a split between design and human scale is the church Chiesa Madre in the form of a giant floating sphere on top of a hill. 

From what was left of the old town, Burri created a Land Art work called Grande Cretto (Large crack). The memorial retraces streets and city blocks of the destroyed town by accumulating the rubble of the buildings. Nestled into the hills, it is visible from a distance. Up close, the sheer size of the labyrinth dominates the view. For the first time one can feel the presence of the Gibellinians and their loss.

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