Antonino Leto (1844-1913) - Piccolo panararo

Antonino Leto (Monreale, June 14, 1844 – Capri, May 31, 1913) small panorama
Biography of Antonino Leto
Antonino Leto was born in Monreale on June 14, 1844. Thanks to a monthly allowance from his hometown municipality, in 1860 he moved to Palermo where he studied painting with Luigi Barba, author of historical works. The following year Leto began attending the studio of the landscape painter Luigi Lojacono; there he met his son Francesco, and thus drew closer to the dictates of naturalist verismo.

In 1864 he went to Naples to continue his studies; he experimented with the approaches of Palizzi, exponent of positivist verismo, but he was particularly attracted to the painting of Giuseppe De Nittis and to the innovative poetic of the painters of the School of Resina. Following the Macchiaiolo school, this movement advocated painting from life and a freer rendering of reality. Returned to Palermo for health reasons, he met Senator Ignazio Florio; the latter commissioned him to paint a view of the wine-making plant he had founded in Marsala. In 1870 he won the silver medal at the Palermo Art Exhibition with the painting Return to the Grazing, and the following year the gold medal at the Syracuse Regional Exposition with the picture The Storm. In 1873, subsidized by Ignazio Florio, he stayed in Portici, where he made life studies of thevesuvian landscape with the painters of the School of Resina, and in Rome where he formed a friendship with Francesco Paolo Michetti, from whom he absorbed rural themes. The following year in Rome he won the competition for the Artistic Pension with the work The Olive Harvest, closely inspired by the representational modes of Palizzi and Lojacono.

Due to fragile health, he requested and obtained the transfer of the Artistic Pension from Rome to Florence, where he remained until 1878. In the Tuscan capital he deepened his knowledge of the Macchiaiolo current and acquired a simpler painting technique. Between 1879 and 1880 he went to Paris at the invitation of the famous dealer Goupil, for whom De Nittis already worked. It was from this artist that Leto acquired the methods and themes of Derivation from Impressionism, identifiable in urban landscapes. Returning to Palermo due to the unhealthy Parisian climate that exhausted him in body and spirit, he stayed with Senator Florio; the latter commissioned him some decorations for the villa at Olivuzza and for the one at Colli, and after a visit to Favignana—during which Leto probably witnessed a matanza (slaughter)—a painting depicting tuna fishing. The painting had a long and troubled gestation, begun in 1881, it was completed and delivered only in 1887.

The 1880s were very fruitful for Leto, both in quality and in abundance of artistic production; his preferred themes returned to nature and were inspired by the simplicity of life led by the people who work in it. In 1882, before going to Capri, he participated in the Turin Exhibition with Bosco di Portici and Centodieci years in Ischia; the following year he participated in the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Rome with The Sandals of Torre del Greco, a painting that met with enormous success and was praised by D’Annunzio in the weekly "Fanfulla della domenica". Present at various national and international exhibitions in Nice, Paris and London, in 1889 the artist moved permanently to Capri, supported economically by purchases from French and German antiquaries and by the collector Krupp.

At the Neapolitan Promoter Exhibition of 1890, Leto presented A Detail of Tuna Fishing in Sicily, made between 1881 and 1884, small in size and with a different compositional setup from the large canvas of 1887.

In the Capri years, Antonino Leto’s style is now fully defined: a perfect balance between precise drawing and the laying of color has been achieved; his attentive and emotional regard for nature remains. The men and the landscape of the island of Capri remained a continual source of inspiration for the artist: fishermen, girls and women of fresh beauty, immersed in sunlight and engaged in daily activities populate his canvases.

In 1910 he exhibited at the Venice Biennale Marina di Catiello and Behind the Little Sea. He died in Capri on May 31, 1913, in poverty and now distant from the commercial circuits of art.