Pietro Fortuna Unveils 'Folds' at Gibellina's Chiesa Madre as Part of Italian Contemporary Art Capital 2026

Five steel sculptures by Pietro Fortuna, titled Folds, have been installed in front of the Chiesa Madre in Gibellina, Sicily. The permanent public artwork is the first realized in Gibellina since the era of former mayor Ludovico Corrao, who after the 1968 Belice earthquake invited contemporary artists to rebuild the town's identity. The project is curated by Andrea Cusumano, artistic director of Gibellina Capitale dell'Arte Contemporanea 2026, the city's program as Italy's first Capital of Contemporary Art. Fortuna, born in Padova in 1950, lives between Rome and Brussels and maintains a studio at Operanova, a former Maglificio Vigna between Lake Bolsena and Orvieto. He studied architecture and philosophy and has exhibited worldwide, including at the São Paulo Biennale. The five steel towers dialogue with the surrounding landscape and with Quaroni's Sistema delle piazze. In a statement, Fortuna described his approach as rejecting literary myth and narrative convention, seeking a realism that bears witness without emphasis. He invoked Meister Eckhart and the image of things trembling when observed, arguing that the desire to grasp and catalog reality fragments it. The work, he said, invites reconsideration of things reduced to mere information. Gibellina's art heritage includes Alberto Burri's Cretto and Pietro Consagra's La Porta del Belice.