SCIENZA E BENI CULTURALI XXXII.2016
Maria Grazia Ercolino1 1 Dipartimento di Storia, Disegno e Restauro dell’Architettura, “La Sapienza”, Roma. mariagrazia.ercolino@uniroma1.it
Over the course of the past century, the ruins resulting from violent conflicts and catastrophes have been transformed into a powerful instrument of collective memory. The work of art being examined here is one of the most representative and suggestive examples of this particular category of ruins: the Grande Cretto designed by Alberto Burri atop the ruins of Gibellina, the Sicilian town destroyed in 1968 by an earthquake that devastated the entire Belice Valley. For some years the Cretto, in state of total neglect, shows obvious signs of evident decay and the need of restoration. In 2008 started an articulate program of study and testing to define intervention procedures most suitable to the conservation of the work, but the lack of funds did not allow the intervention. Last year, with the funds allocated for the Burri’s centenary, it was preferred to complete the work, ignoring the decay and causing a striking contrast between the new and the existing part. At present, in the face of a pervasive state of deterioration, made even more evident by the completion, and a conservation project blocked by bureaucracy, it begins to discuss a new proposal of 'participated renovation', specular to conservative project already exists and defined heretical by the proponent. The new idea provides for the simple involvement of the whole population in a sort of recurring maintenance practices, culminating in a periodic repainting lime of its surfaces. Between the two opposite proposals the truth is in the middle: Cretto needs a restoration, but needs even more the population’s care, to enhance, maintain and promote it.
Parole chiave/Key-words: Alberto Burri, Contemporary Art, Landscape, Participation, Restoration.