Guttuso Museum: inside Villa Cattolica, the beating heart of Bagheria
In Bagheria, in a scenic 18th-century villa overlooking the sea, lives a museum that is much more than an art gallery: the Guttuso Museum. Housed in Villa Cattolica, the museum takes its name from the celebrated painter Renato Guttuso, who was born here in 1911 and wished to leave a tangible mark of his art and social commitment. The exhibition spans over two centuries of figurative art and includes works by Guttuso as well as by artists close to him, such as Carla Accardi, Fausto Pirandello, and Piero Guccione. One section is devoted to Sicilian carts, which fascinated the artist as a child, and another to the history of cinema, thanks to the Lo Medico Collection. Between contemporary installations and testimonies from the past, the museum is a journey into Sicilian identity, its narrative power, its contrasts. Visiting the Museo Guttuso means immersing yourself in a place that tells the story not only of art but of life, of the land, of collective memory.
Just a few kilometers from Palermo stands an imposing 18th-century villa that seems to watch over time and beauty: this is Villa Cattolica, the monumental heart of Bagheria and, since 1973, home to the Guttuso Museum. Built in 1736 by the Prince of Cattolica Eraclea, Francesco Bonanno, as a summer residence, Villa Cattolica is one of the most fascinating examples of Sicilian Baroque architecture. Its dramatic layout, with corner towers, an inner courtyard, and a noble chapel, recalls the aristocratic grandeur of a Bagheria that was, in the 18th century, a favorite retreat of Palermo’s nobility.
But the villa was not just a vacation home. Over time, it changed roles and identity, becoming a fortified farmstead, a refuge during epidemics, a canning factory, a cosmetics plant, and even a military barracks and agricultural warehouse. Only in 1973 did this timeless place find new life thanks to the vision of the Municipality of Bagheria and the generosity of Renato Guttuso, who decided to donate a significant collection of his works to his hometown, founding the Civic Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art. Today, the Guttuso Museum is one of the most compelling cultural centers in Sicily, with a collection spanning over two centuries of figurative art and an identity deeply rooted in collective memory.
Renato Guttuso and the return home
Guttuso was not only one of the most important Italian painters of the 20th century. He was also an engaged intellectual, a man who lived through the great conflicts of the last century and brought their contradictions onto his canvases. Born in Bagheria in 1911, he maintained a strong bond with his homeland throughout his life. That bond, often painful, deeply marked his work: his paintings echo the sharp scent of citrus groves, the warmth of the Mediterranean, the power of popular faces, the sensuality of Sicilian light.
And to Bagheria, he chose to return, not just symbolically, but physically. His remains rest in the villa’s garden, in an outdoor funerary monument designed by his friend, sculptor Giacomo Manzù. The tomb, carved from a single block of Azul Macaubas marble, is raised on steel columns and accompanied by four golden bronze doves: a touching work that transcends the rhetoric of burial and becomes a poetic gesture, a living presence in the city that saw him born.
Guttuso Museum: a museum that tells the story of art and artists
The Guttuso Museum is not a simple monographic gallery. It’s a collective story, a space for memory, dialogue, and experimentation. Guttuso’s works are, of course, the beating heart of the museum. Among the most notable pieces are Fichidindia (1959), Portrait of the Father (1930), Self-Portrait with Mimise (1966), along with drawings, studies, sketches, and photographs that trace the evolution of an artist constantly torn between realism and vision. But the museum is also, and above all, a place that preserves relationships.
Alongside Guttuso’s pieces are those donated by artists who shared human and intellectual paths with him: a true artistic constellation that tells the story of the 20th century through its branches. From Carla Accardi to Fausto Pirandello, from Giuseppe Santomaso to Piero Guccione, to more recent donations by contemporary artists such as Chiara Dynys, Pino Pinelli, Croce Taravella, Turi Simeti, Giacomo Rizzo, and Filly Cusenza. A powerful example of this interplay between biography and homage is What Is to Be Done? The Funerals of Guttuso by Paolo Baratella, donated in 2018, which powerfully conveys the public and political dimension of the artist’s legacy.
Sicilian carts: the folk art that captivated Guttuso
In the Sicily of Guttuso’s childhood, the streets were alive with the slow procession of Sicilian carts: means of transport, yes, but also true masterpieces of mobile folk art. Their painted sides told epic, religious, or chivalric tales; every plank of wood, every piece of wrought iron was intricately decorated, turning the everyday into wonder. Their carved borders featured floral motifs, dramatic scenes, and miniature figures in a visual symphony celebrating the people’s shared memory. Guttuso fondly recalled the hours spent as a boy in front of Emilio Murdolo’s cart-painting workshop, just across from his home in Bagheria. That’s where his fascination for this popular art form – blending color, craft, and storytelling – began. Later, he met Michele Ducato, heir to a tradition that turned cart painting into a refined expressive language.
In 1966, the Guttuso Museum acquired the entire workshop of Domenico Ducato, with the aim not only to preserve the works but also to safeguard the artisanal knowledge so closely tied to Sicily’s visual history. Nowadays, this section of the museum houses a working cart built in the 1950s and painted in 1985 by Domenico Ducato, along with a precious collection of preparatory drawings, tracing papers, and sketches made by the family: 24 pictorial repertoires, including ex-votos, cart sides, and narrative decorations. The collection also includes rare documents and illustrated books by Tancredi Scarpelli and Fabio Fabbi, published in the late 1800s by Nerbini, which served as visual references for many of the scenes painted on the carts. This section is not only a historical record but a heartfelt tribute to that ‘minor’ art that transformed Sicily’s streets into open-air galleries.
The Lo Medico Collection: cinema as imagination
One of the museum’s most surprising aspects is its cinema section, born from the donation of the Lo Medico family, renowned collectors from Bagheria. It is one of the most important collections in Italy dedicated to film illustration: posters, lobby cards, original sketches narrating over a century of Italian and international cinema history. It’s a journey through the dreams, desires, and aesthetics of the 20th century. From posters illustrated by masters such as Luigi Martinati, Anselmo Ballester, and Silvano Campeggi, to those designed by Guttuso himself, like the one for Bitter Rice (1949). The collection also opens a window onto Bagheria’s cultural life, which in the 1950s and ’60s boasted eight cinemas: a time when cinema was a social ritual, a communal space, a shared emotion.
A journey through past and present at the Guttuso Museum
Beyond painting and cinema, Villa Cattolica hosts installations and contemporary works that create visual and conceptual short circuits with the site’s historical memory. One of the most powerful is The Great Warrior by Croce Taravella (2024): a calcified figure, nine meters long, lying in the villa’s old snow pit. Its body opens to reveal its entrails, like an archaeological exploration of trauma. The sculpture is both unsettling and mesmerizing, speaking of violence, resistance, and memory. The museum path is conceived as a continuous flow: works are not isolated but echo and challenge one another, creating dialogue. There is no strict chronological order, but a narrative fabric that guides visitors through an immersive experience. The recently restored spaces enhance the villa’s architecture without compromising its soul: each room is a bridge between eras, languages, and sensibilities.
Bagheria and the soul of Sicily
Visiting the Guttuso Museum is also a way to rediscover Bagheria, a city that was once an artistic and intellectual laboratory, home to Tommaso Natale, Ignazio Buttitta, Giuseppe Tornatore, and Dacia Maraini. A city ‘grotesque and poignant’, as Guttuso himself described it, full of contradictions and truths. Just steps from Villa Cattolica are other wonders: Villa Palagonia with its famous baroque monsters, the sea stretching to Porticello. But it is the Guttuso Museum that perhaps best encapsulates the island’s deepest essence: a tapestry of history, struggle, art, and light.
