In the veins of Sicily flow lava and light, silence and revolt. Renato Guttuso was able to transform all this into painting, making his art a lens through which to observe reality and a powerful voice to narrate it. Born in Bagheria, just outside Palermo, in 1911, Guttuso was not just a painter: he was a witness, a militant, an intellectual, and above all, a man who drew sap and pain, love and tension from his land. Today, his name is linked to paintings vibrant with colour and meaning, to works found in symbolic places in Sicily and which, together, compose a profound and enthralling cultural itinerary.
Touring the places where Renato Guttuso’s works are preserved in Sicily is a journey into the memory of the 20th century, but also an invitation to look at the island with new eyes. In this article, we tell his story, his thoughts, and above all, where to admire his most significant works live.
The origins and training of a precocious talent
Renato Guttuso was born in Bagheria, a town of Baroque villas and centuries-old olive groves, in a cultured family environment open to art. His father, a surveyor and watercolourist, recognised his inclinations early on and encouraged him. The natural and human environment that surrounds Guttuso’s home – the countryside, markets, popular life – enters his imagination and settles into his gaze, becoming the living material of his first works.
In Palermo, where he moved as a young man to study, he came into contact with artistic and intellectual circles that refined his vision. But it was by looking at the great masters, from Caravaggio to Van Gogh, via Cézanne and Picasso, that Guttuso developed a personal pictorial language: figurative, impactful, strongly expressive. His adherence to realism is never scholastic: it is tension, drama, narrative necessity.
In the 1930s he moved first to Rome and then to Milan, where he participated in the activities of the ‘Corrente’ group, which opposed official Fascist art. Guttuso strongly affirmed that art cannot be separated from life, and above all cannot ignore suffering and injustice.
A committed art between form and conscience
Renato Guttuso’s realism is anything but academic. It is a realism that feeds on indignation and participation, that wants to portray social inequalities, human pain, but also the beauty and dignity of everyday life. His subjects are real men and women, peasants, workers, fishermen, and also fruits, still lifes, landscapes of memory.
Guttuso uses colour as a form of stance. Red, in particular, became his hallmark: blood red, passion red, political red. Many of his best-known works are avowedly committed: from the famous Crucifixion of 1941, interpreted as a denunciation against totalitarianism, to the large collective paintings of the post-war period, in which he depicts demonstrations, political funerals, strikes and land occupations.
But alongside the public and civil dimension, Renato Guttuso always cultivated an intimate and lyrical one. His nudes, table settings, lemons and prickly pears speak a Sicilian language, sensual and carnal. The artist never stopped being a child of his island, even when he lived far away. In his paintings, Sicily is everywhere, even when it is not declared: in faces, gestures, colours.
Where to admire Renato Guttuso in Sicily
Bagheria – Villa Cattolica: the heart of the story
The most representative place to understand Renato Guttuso’s universe is undoubtedly the Guttuso Museum in Bagheria, housed in the 18th-century Villa Cattolica, surrounded by a citrus grove overlooking the sea. The largest permanent collection of the artist’s work in Sicily is housed here. The museum tour includes works covering all phases of his production: from youthful drawings to political canvases, portraits and still lifes.
The museum is also the place of his memory: in the garden, next to an olive tree, lie his remains. It is a place of meditation, where art meets the earth, and where the artist’s Sicilian identity becomes tangible.
Aspra – The frescoes found in the Church of the Addolorata
Not far from Bagheria, in the seaside village of Aspra, lies one of Guttuso’s lesser-known but most surprising works: a cycle of youthful frescoes painted in his twenties in the Church of the Addolorata. The sacred figures, painted inspired by the faces of local fishermen, were judged too modern and were covered up for decades. Only in the 1990s were they restored and returned to the public. Seeing those faces today, in a simple and authentic context, is like opening a window on the artist’s youth and his early tension between tradition and innovation.
Palermo – La Vucciria at Palazzo Steri
Among Renato Guttuso’s most iconic works is La Vucciria, a large painting from 1974 that depicts Palermo’s famous market with an almost cinematic intensity. The meat, fish, faces and noises of the market seem to come out of the canvas. It is a visceral homage to popular Palermo, alive and sanguine. The painting is in the Palazzo Chiaramonte-Steri, home of the University of Palermo, in an evocative setting that enhances its expressive power.
Villa Zito – Etna in eruption
Also in Palermo, at the Fondazione Sicilia – Villa Zito, one of the artist’s later works is preserved: L’eruzione dell’Etna. An explosion of colour celebrating the primordial force of nature and the majesty of the volcano, also a symbol of Sicily. In this painting, Guttuso’s painting reaches a lyrical and visionary intensity, a few years after his death.
Messina – The Vittorio Emanuele Theatre ceiling
In Messina, the Teatro Vittorio Emanuele II houses a monumental work: The Legend of Colapesce, painted on the theatre ceiling in 1985. It is an epic, powerful and imaginative composition that reinterprets an ancient Sicilian myth in a modern key. Colapesce, a legendary figure who holds the island underwater, becomes an allegory of resistance and hope. Admiring it from the theatre’s gallery is a unique experience, combining art, myth and architecture.
Gibellina – Night and rebirth
Finally, inland from Trapani, Gibellina Nuova is home to one of Guttuso’s most intimate and moving works: La notte di Gibellina, inspired by a torchlight procession through the ruins of the town after the Belice earthquake. It is a discreet but intense painting, exhibited at the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Ludovico Corrao, that tells of Sicily’s ability to be reborn through beauty and solidarity.
An itinerary of art and identity
Renato Guttuso was able to narrate his era, but he also left Sicilians and travellers a visual, ethical and cultural heritage that can be explored directly. Following his tracks through the places of Sicily is more than an art journey: it is an encounter with the profound gaze of a man who painted his land with truth, without idealising it, but loving it with absolute intensity.
Guttuso is still present in the markets, in the colours of the vegetables, in the faces of simple people. He is in theatres and museums, but also in workplaces and folk tales. Visiting his works in Sicily is not only a cultural act: it is a way to look at the island from the inside, to listen to its most authentic voices.