Gaetano Tranchino

Gaetano Tranchino (born 1938) is an Italian naïve painter, primarily known for his still-life works of art. His art mainly depicts scenes from Sicily. According to writer and novelist Leonardo Sciascia, Tranchino's work is influenced by writers such as Jorge Luis Borges and Joseph Conrad. Early life Tranchino was born in Syracuse, Sicily, on the island of Ortygia, in 1938. Fina Serena Barbagallo's 2015 monograph discusses Tranchino's upbringing and early career in Ortygia, Syracuse.

Career Tranchino held his first exhibitions in the 1960s and later presented solo and group shows in Italy and abroad. His work was exhibited in Dublin in 2010 at RUA RED (Tallaght) under the title The Place of Memory, receiving a review in The Irish Times. In 2022, he presented I luoghi della memoria ('Places of Memory'), an exhibition of about twenty paintings featuring motifs of architecture, figures, and objects.

Style and themes In his 2010 review, Aidan Dunne of The Irish Times points to the storytelling and surreal qualities present in Tranchino’s work. Dunne described the works as "pictorial fables" that combined warmth with controlled nostalgia. The 2015 monograph by Fina Serena Barbagallo surveyed Tranchino’s motifs, development, and references to Sicilian settings. thumb

Illustrative work Irish poet Pat Boran has featured Tranchino's artwork on several book covers. The anthology The Word Ark: A Pocket Book of Animal Poems includes Tranchino's line drawings as illustrations. Boran also wrote the catalogue introduction to one of Tranchino's exhibitions and is involved with the official Gaetano Tranchino website.