Michele Catti, a student of Francesco Lojacono and initially interested in investigations of nature and shooting from life, from the late eighties began to be passionate about an internalized vision of multifaceted city life. An interest born from having seen small Parisian views brought to the city by Antonino Leto after his stay in Paris.
But it wasn’t just a resumption of city life, in fact Catti is the artist who best expresses the search for the inner landscape at the GAM, an emotional filter that translates into painting and that manages to apply not only to human figures, but also on the vegetation.
Michele Catti, La fiera dei morti, 1914, oil on canvas
Thus the large and best-known urban views, grayed by autumn mists and low lights, such as Two November, Porta Nuova, The Fair of the Dead or Last Leaves became figurative projections of the painter’s intimate and melancholic nature. From the 1890s Michele Catti’s paintings entered the most exclusive salons of fin de siècle Palermo, those of the Florio, Tasca and Lanza di Trabia houses. In 1910 a personal exhibition was dedicated to him in the school premises of Piazza Castelnuovo, which happily ended with the purchase of Last Leaves by the museum.