Cemetery of San Cataldo, Modena, Italy, Plan study
Aldo Rossi
Italian, 1931–1997
Gianni Braghieri
Italian, born 1945
1972
Aldo Rossi's color-ink and graphite study on tracing paper proposes a compact, geometric plan for the Cemetery of San Cataldo, testing how archetypal elements—a stepped pyramid, a cube, and layered corridors—organize tombs, movement, and ritual space.
The drawing strikes you as a precise, almost theatrical diagram: turquoise bands create nested corridors around a dark, stepped pyramid at the center, while brown ink edges and the tracing-paper transparency give the forms crisp depth and an unsettling stillness.
The study embodies Rossi’s turn to typology and collective memory—reducing complex programs to elemental forms—and helped steer late-20th-century architectural thinking toward a poetic, historically aware modernism.
Medium
Color ink and graphite on tracing paper
Dimensions
11 x 15 3/4" (27.9 x 40 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation
Accession
1284.2000
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
