Early Life

Born in Havana in 1904, during his childhood and adolescence, Antonio Gattorno was considered a brilliant student. In 1919, while in his third year as a student at the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts in Havana, he won a five-year scholarship to study in Europe. At the time, he was the youngest person ever to win a Cuban government scholarship to study art in Europe. He remained there for seven years, traveling throughout Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, and Germany.  He had many great teachers and even met Salvador Dali and Picasso. Combining studies in fine arts in Cuba and Europe, Gattorno was trained in the avant-garde currents of the time, and soon became one of the pillars of modern art in Cuba. He received international recognition at this early point in his career and was compared to the great masters of the age.

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Adulthood

Between 1927 and 1939, the content of Gattorno's painting shifted from a national to an international lens. This shift injected Cuban culture with new values, as he depicted the reality of poverty and humiliation suffered by the nation. In this context, Gattorno's art was admired for its excellent quality, especially in the ways it reflected Cuban reality. Gattorno created a body of work that displayed a people emerging from the shadows of colonial domination, resisting the unfair nature of American imperial greed extending into Latin America. 

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In 1935, Gattorno's fame was perhaps at its peak. This period coincides with when Hemingway and John Dos Passos begin to take note of him and write highly about his work. Hemingway claimed Gattorno as one of the most prominent artists of Cuban painting, a declaration that contributed to the growing fame of the painter. Gattorno came to the United States on the advice and constant prodding of Hemingway, who had told the young artist, "No one can earn a living as a painter in Cuba". By January 1936, following a string of such critical successes and with the help of Hemingway, Gattorno held an exhibit in the Passedoit Gallery in New York. 

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In 1939, at the height of his fame, Gattorno met the beautiful Isabel do Carmo Moura Cabral. Isabel was an extremely beautiful woman and was also very rich. They were introduced at the Venezuelan pavilion of the World Fair, and love came quickly. A year later, they married and took up residence in Greenwich Village, New York. Eventually, they would relocate to Acushnet, Massachusetts, where they remained together until the painter's death in 1980.  

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Later Years

Once in New York, Gattorno gradually abandoned the artistic style and subjects that had made him famous in Cuba, and his work declined in relevance. His painting became more influenced by mainstream tastes, slowly disconnecting from the deep cultural identity he once explored. He became something of a socialite, frequently visiting the elegant cafes of the exclusive neighborhoods of New York. During his forty years in the United States, Gattorno never had to sell a single painting due to the support he received from his wife, Isabel Cabral.

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Despite Gattorno's immense pride in his heritage, his move to the United States was viewed as a betrayal by many. In fact, he was excluded from the exhibition "Cuban Painting of Today" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1944. In 1949, when Gattorno was invited to Italy for a series of solo exhibits in Rome and Florence, he was featured more like an American painter than a Cuban painter. He spent the rest of his years in the United States, only visiting Cuba once in 1946. 

Rather than abandoning his Cuban heritage, like most Cuban art critics believed, Gattorno simply redefined it in a new visual style. Gattorno's work evolved from a primitive style to a modern phase, which incorporated elements of surrealistic romanticism, classical composition, and abstractionism. He continually refined his technique, as all artists do. However, this evolution contributed to his loss of fame.

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Gattorno's work from the 1940s is some of his best work, yet it is also his least known. Ironically, his early work that he once dismissed as his “primitive period”, a term he used to describe his raw stylistic phase, is now the most celebrated by collectors and scholars. His final exhibit, a retrospective collection spanning 60 years of work, was held at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, in October 1978. He died in Acushnet, Massachusetts, in 1980.

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It is not uncommon for artists to evolve stylistically in response to changing environments or personal circumstances. In the case of Gattorno, his relocation to the United States marked a significant turning point in his life. Having found love, family, and financial security, the urgency that once fueled his artistic expression diminished, leading to a gradual withdrawal from the creative sphere and eventual descent into obscurity.