Gaetano Pesce's Church of Solitude was conceived in reaction to his experience of New York in the 1970s, where he saw people living together, "helter-skelter in crowds." To provide a serene place for introspection and contemplation, he buried the church beneath a vacant lot amid the towers of the city. The silent sanctuary incorporated small individual cells, a further retreat from the city's corporate and institutional culture. An excavated landscape was, for Pesce, an overlooked space that could provide for people's future needs.

Publication excerpt from

an essay by Bevin Cline and Tina di Carlo, in Terence Riley, ed., The Changing of the Avant-Garde: Visionary Architectural Drawings from the Howard Gilman Collection, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2002, p. 133.

Medium Watercolor, colored ink, and pencil on paper
Dimensions 59 1/4 x 59" (150.5 x 149.9 cm)
Credit Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation
Object number 1223.2000
Department Architecture & Design

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