Abstract

On, the artist Joseph Beuys visited Gibellina, a small Sicilian town rebuilt with the help of numerous artists after the 1968 earthquake that completely destroyed it. Beuys spent little more than a day in Gibellina, accompanied by the photographer Mimmo Jodice, who photographed him throughout the visit. The shots immortalised him between the ruins of the destroyed town and the new town, already full of works of art. Before leaving, he planned a forest of three hundred oaks as a gift for the re-founded city. This work will never be realised, but Beuys’s passage from Gibellina, documented in Jodice’s photographs, is itself part of the work, as well as of Gibellina’s history. Starting from this event, we will retrace Beuys’ poetics in relation to the Gibellina operation, highlighting the concept of anthropological art developed by the German artist and his practical experimentation in the reconstruction of Gibellina.