“Four extraordinary paintings by Domingo Saglimbene have become the city’s heritage, thanks to a donation that responds to the spiritual testament of a great artist towards his land of origin”.
Thus the mayor Enrico Trantino welcomed in the council room of Palazzo degli Elefanti the arrival in Catania, from the United States, of the valuable paintings of the established Italian-American painter who before dying (in 2016) expressed the desire that some of his iconic works they returned to their hometown.
The four pictorial works, created in oil on masonite in 1980, are: “In the Company of Sunflowers”, “Great Expectations”, “Out with Cicero, The Dane”, “Hot Summer”.
They were delivered to the mayor, and to the Catania community, by Diana Saglimbene Tice, daughter of the artist, and by the patron and art dealer Ron Hall, accompanied by the gallery owner Massimo Ligreggi, also present the director of Culture, Paolo Di Caro and the manager of the municipality’s museum system, Valentina Noto.
Saglimbene, born in 1920 in Catania, emigrated in the 1930s with his family to Detroit and in the United States he developed and affirmed his talent, taking inspiration from masters such as Picasso, Modigliani, D’Alì, Van Gogh.
The influences of these authors are present in the brushstrokes of the paintings that will be exhibited in the Palace of Culture, where they can be admired by many visitors and tourists.
Mayor Trantino explored some aspects of Saglimbene’s art and the American context with Ron Hall, orator and eclectic man of culture known in the USA, author of NY Times best sellers as well as film productions (his is the Paramount film “Same Kind of Different as Me”), promoter of social activities for the benefit of the homeless in particular.
