Emilio Isgrò “erases” also wine to remove the excess and reveal its deepest essence

Conceptual artist and painter, but also poet, writer, playwright, and director, Emilio Isgrò, who, starting from the 1960s, created one of the most revolutionary and original bodies of work - which made him earn several participations in the Venice Biennale and the first prize at the São Paulo Biennial - is one of the most internationally renowned names in Italian art, the inventor of “cancellation”, the technique of covering words in texts, books, maps, or codes with ink strokes similar to marker lines, in order to reveal their essence and protect them from media overexposure. And now the great Sicilian artist is also among the most famous contemporary artists who have signed designer labels for renowned wineries, “erasing” those of Il Bianco and Il Rosso di Ludovico, the wines of Tenute Orestiadi produced in Gibellina, in the heart of the Belìce Valley in Sicily, where also wine helped transform into energy the difficult recovery of the territory after the devastating earthquake of 1968.
A special project, in the year when Gibellina becomes the first “Italian Capital of Contemporary Art” 2026, the consecration of the rebirth of the Belìce Valley through beauty, starting from that unrepeatable season in which art, architecture, poetry, and theater became tools of human, even before urban, reconstruction of the territory destroyed by the earthquake, thanks to writers, directors, architects, and artists from all over the world, such as Alberto Burri, author of the “Grande Cretto”, one of the largest land art works in the world, which, beneath its white concrete, like a shroud, preserves forever the ruins of Old Gibellina - who were protagonists of the cultural project arisen from the vision of Ludovico Corrao, the mayor-intellectual who transformed a collective tragedy into one of the most extraordinary cultural laboratories of the Mediterranean. And which continues today in Gibellina “open-air museum” thanks to the Fondazione Orestiadi, the “Orestiadi”—the cultural festival now in its edition No. 45, among the most prestigious in Italy, and to wine, with Tenute Orestiadi (as WineNews explained in a video).
Also the labels dedicated to Ludovico Corrao and “erased” by Emilio Isgrò are now also part of this narrative that intertwines art, territory, civic memory, and material culture, as highlighted during the meeting “The Orestiadi of Ludovico Corrao in the Capital of Contemporary Art. 45 years of contemporary resistance”, held recently at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan (the historic theater founded by the great director Giorgio Strehler, of which Tenute Orestiadi are wine partner for the theater season, ed), with Isgrò, Antonella Corrao, president of the Scientific Committee of the Fondazione Orestiadi, Alfio Scuderi, artistic director of the Orestiadi Festival, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, president of the Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia (previously interviewed by WineNews about the link between wine and art), and Rosario Di Maria, president of Tenute Orestiadi, together with the directors of the Piccolo Teatro, Claudio Longhi and Lanfranco Licauli, and the ceo of Tenute Orestiadi, Alessandro Costantini. During the event, a “preview” performance of “From the Oresteia by Emilio Isgrò” was staged, with actors Vincenzo Pirrotta and Silvia Ajelli performing excerpts from the “Agamemnon” alongside the projection of Isgrò “erased text”, part of the rich program of the “Orestiadi” 2026, which will be staged at Burri “Cretto” on June 26th and 27th.