Gianbecchina Art Gallery
From the love of Master Gianbecchina for Sambuca, the birth of a unique art gallery
The Gianbecchina Institution was founded in Sambuca in 1997, named after the great Sambucese painter Giovanni Becchina, known as Gianbecchina, who passed away in 2001 at the age of 92. The artist, one of the greatest exponents of 20th-century Italian art, despite having exhibited in the world's largest cities, wanted his artistic heritage to be preserved in Sambuca. On August 2, 1997, on his eightieth birthday, he donated a substantial artistic heritage of 192 works created between 1924 and 1996 to his hometown. These works illustrate the artist's journey and the leitmotif of his creations: Sicily, with its chromatic hues, as the stage for the life and work of man. Until 2023, only 45 of the 192 donated works were displayed inside the former Church of San Calogero. Due to the limited space of the venue, the remaining 150 were kept by the Gianbecchina Archive until the new art gallery dedicated to the Master was established in the former Monastery of Santa Caterina.
The Gianbecchina Art Gallery in the Former Monastery of Santa Caterina
We are at the Gianbecchina Pinacoteca in Sambuca di Sicilia, housed in the surviving wing of the former Benedictine Monastery of St. Catherine. The original structure of the entire complex, founded in 1515 by the noble Giovan Domenico Giacone d’Irlanda, extended along Corso Umberto from the present-day Palazzo della Banca Sicana to Via Roma, including what is now Piazza della Vittoria (located next to the church today). It comprised the monastery (on the left wing), the church (in the central part), and, on the right, the cloister, bordering Via del Mercato (now Via Roma) and, at the rear, Via Telegrafo. In 1927, the part of the monastic building to the right of the church was entirely demolished, and in 1929, Piazza della Vittoria was created with the Monument to the Fallen in the Great War. The surviving wing of the monastery, which was previously used as municipal offices and a rectory, became the location of the "Istituzione Gianbecchina" Pinacoteca in 2023.
The very first years
A contemporary space to narrate the painting and history of a 20th-century Master
The new art gallery hosts the 192 works donated by the Master to Sambuca in its 11 rooms, spread across three levels. The modern space includes a multimedia room, enriched by the musical notes of Floriana Franchina, and aims to showcase the artistic and human story of one of the 20th-century painters who best depicted the beauty of his land. The exhibition, organized in a strict chronological order, presents the full creative spectrum of Gianbecchina: from his early youthful works—when he was part of the group of artists including Guttuso, Franchina, Joppolo, Consagra, and Accardi—to his Milanese period with the "Corrente" group, from landscapes full of light and color to Lyrical and Social Realism, from material Abstractism to the passionate works dedicated to the Lovers, and finally to the mournful expression caused by the dramatic earthquake that struck the Belìce valley in 1968. The exhibition concludes with the proud faces and gazes of land and sea, including the farmers from the Bread Cycle or the fishermen from the Mattanza, and returns to nature with the paintings in the section dedicated to the Great Landscape.
The island commissions, the frescoes, and the theme of the landscape
Until the mid-1950s, Gianbecchina worked on frescoes and restoration projects in numerous churches on the island damaged by wartime events, commissioned by galleries and the Superintendence. His experience with frescoes also influenced his easel painting, where he employed broader and more synthetic applications, calculated compositions, and a wider range of colors. From 1954 onwards, in the retreat he built largely with his own hands in Adragna, a height overlooking Sambuca and the Mediterranean, he was inspired by the sea, sky, and land. The landscapes, losing their human-defined forms, were translated into pure color, fluid or resistant material, and changing over time: nature returned to its primordial forms with rocks no longer kissed by the sun but burning, fire-resistant clays, trees charred by its flames melting into the seas, and skies embracing the cosmos.
The abstract period, the Lovers, the earthquake and the rebirth
From 1960 to 1965, he entered his abstract period—never geometric, but textural—during which he painted the tumult of nature (a descent into the bowels of the earth, among compressed forces, a flooding of waters) which then calms down again. The surfaces recompose, the small villages in the vast expanse cluster together as if to protect themselves from the danger of ravines and crevices, the deep wounds of the earth. In 1967, new characters appeared in this transformed world: lovers, first within abstract landscapes, then against a free backdrop of rocks and sea; ancient deities in a dramatic embrace, young couples among trees, ears of corn, reeds; the exaltation of youth, love as an act of nature in its sprouting and blooming. This joyful hymn to life was interrupted by the 1968 earthquake: in dozens of drawings and paintings, the artist captured the compact structures being disrupted, the surfaces splitting; he expressed desolation and abandonment, raising his protest against the lack of intervention for the affected areas, prey to speculation and moral and social disintegration. Thus, in his paintings, the figures of the farmers of Belìce reappear, still tenaciously attached to the land, with their will to resist: the only hope for rebirth.
The charm of nature
Three years after the earthquake, the painter witnesses the grand and terrifying spectacle of Mount Etna in full eruption. He observes the advancing magma by night, the blinding flames in the woods, and the houses submerged by lava, capturing these scenes with his striking colorism and dynamic realism. In his later years, his painting becomes more focused on the complex plasticity of nature, on rocks that crumple at the feet of waters, scorched by fire. The faces of men appear hardened by toil and wrinkles: monumental figures like rocks, old men of a generation, in the villages and countryside of a Sicily far from the civilization of machines, from which the new generations flee.
Gianbecchina: a calling as an artist and his early career
The story of Gianbecchina, so deeply connected to the land of Sicily and the experiences of its people, begins with a migration: in 1912, his parents left for America, leaving Sambuca, their native town in the Belìce valley. The three-year-old child was entrusted to an uncle who would oversee his early education and attempt to guide him toward a career as an agronomist. However, after being introduced to his first palette and tubes by Vincenza Oddo, an amateur painter from the local nobility, he was irresistibly drawn to art. Gaetano Greppi, a wall decorator, hired him as an apprentice. Giovanni learned from him how to mix colors, create ornaments, and paint faux stuccoes and panels with flowers and birds. Later, working independently, he experimented with frescoes on the walls of houses and churches. To pursue his dream of painting, inspired by his fellow townspeople, painters Antonio Guarino and Alfonso Amorelli, he used his first savings to move to Palermo. There, he enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts in the free nude drawing school, where he learned the techniques of drawing and painting, achieving his artistic maturity in 1933.
The professional encounters: from Pippo Rizzo to Guttuso
With the adventurous spirit of the most enterprising Sicilians, at 20 years old and without a penny, he left for Rome, where he attended the Academy of Fine Arts from 1934 to 1935. There, he met Pippo Rizzo and continued his studies thanks to a scholarship offered by the Academy of Palermo. It was the time of camaraderie among Guttuso, Barbera, Lea Pasqualino Noto, and Nino Franchina: together with Topazia Alliata and other intellectuals, artists, musicians, and journalists, Giovanni attended the meetings of this avant-garde group of artists open to new ideas, in the studio on Corso Pisani and later at the Pasqualino residence. With Guttuso, whom he often saw in Bagheria, he shared antifascist ideas and the need to escape towards broader horizons. In 1937, in a small fisherman's house in Cefalù rented for six months with the young art scholar Beppe Sala, he painted outdoors, between the sea and countryside, primarily watercolors. Sala's book, "Sodalizio a Cefalù," illustrated by Gianbecchina, preserves the memory of that stay. He left for Rome again when Guttuso permanently left Sicily and stayed with him in his studio in Piazza Melozzo in Forlì. In Milan, he shared a basement on Via Guercino with sculptors Tarantino, Maggio, and Pierluca and the model-painter Bettina: here he met Quasimodo, Migneco, De Grada, Birolli (the circle that would soon give rise to the "Corrente" movement). These were years of hardship and hunger, with many paintings created and very few sold, and some occasional work in illustration and fresco painting. With the escalation of war events, the Italian art market declined: in 1940, Gianbecchina was forced to return to Sicily.
The return to Sicily
In 1941, he secured a teaching position at the artistic high school in Palermo but continued to paint his still lifes with a relaxation, fluidity, and freedom that deviated from the academic norms and the mannered quattrocento style then recommended. In his landscapes, there is no reference to Sironi or Carrà, but rather to Van Gogh and Cézanne, interpreted through a Sicilian lens. Throughout the 1940s, working in Sicily, he transitioned from fluid watercolors and landscapes conceived as vast expanses to depicting authentic villages, often harsh and ungrateful realities. He expresses the ancient peasant culture from which he comes with a loving attention to the layout and arrangement of the fields where wheat grows: tender green in spring, yellow at harvest, parched in summer stubble, among gentle undulations covered with vines; he paints the silver-green of olive groves on the hills and the chrome green of almond trees where white houses peek out; golden tufa quarries and landslides in the Belice valley; crystalline blue rocks in the distance and red at sunset.
Last years activities, the "Bread Cycle", and the Gianbecchina Institution
In the following years, numerous exhibitions and shows took place throughout Italy and abroad. Alongside his intense painting activity, he focused on producing art graphics, engravings, etchings, lithographs, and serigraphs, including those dedicated to the "Bread Cycle." His works are housed in various galleries and public and private collections. In 1997, the "Gianbecchina Institution" was founded, directed by his son Alessandro. He passed away on July 14, 2001, at the age of 92 in the same city where he was born. Over time, the Institution has become a driving force for many cultural initiatives within the Sambuca community. It represents a permanent workshop for Sambuca, where projects related to art and culture are conceived and developed, highlighting the region's potential and promoting tourism, which is an essential premise for economic development.
