Gaetano Porcasi was born in Partinico, a small town near Palermo, in 1965.In 1986 he attended the School of Art and Mosaic in Monreale where he discovered his inborn artistic qualities and took his degree. In 1991 he graduated at Palermo’s High School of Fine Arts . Here some of his schoolmates were famous national and international painters such as Provino, Modica, Di Raco. In the 90s he lived in Sardinia where he taught at the School of Art in Sassari and Alghero and at the Art Lycee atTempio Pausania (SS). Today he teaches History of Art and Drawing in some Sicilian schools.

He has exhibited his own paintings in several Sicilian and Italian towns such as Palermo, Bagheria, Partinico,Cattolica Eraclea, Sassari, Olbia, Roma and Milano. All his exhibitions have always been very successful and his paintings have been bought both by private collectors and by public institutions and associations in Italy and abroad ( The U.S.A , Africa). His artistic talent and his social and political commitment have been praised by many art critics, historians and politicians who have published reviews about Gaetano Porcasi and his works of art in several papers and magazines such as Repubblica, Corriere della Sera, Gente, Oggi, Arte Moderna, Panorama etc.

Gaetano Porcasi has been called “ The painter who paints History” and his paintings are considered “unique” not only for their social and political message and denunciation but also for the artist’s technique and choice of his typical Mediterranean colours from which a strong and deep “Sicilitudine” (Sicilian mood) emerges.

The 2003 itinerant exhibition about” Portella della Ginestra Massacre” is a good example of Porcasi’s social and historical denunciation , of his high level pictorial research and experimentation and of the up-to-dateness of his paintings.In 1947 a lot of Sicilian farmers were fired and killed by the outlaw Salvatore Giuliano and his men at Portella. They were sent by the local Mafiosi and great landowners to stop their attempts at occupying and growing the uncultivated lands of that area. Those victims can be compared to today’s Brazilian campesinos who are killed by the vigilantes sent by the local great landowners to drive them out of their uncultivated lands.

In the fixity of a canvas Gaetano Porcasi succeeds in conveying the pathos of dramatic events and of oppressed people,in giving voice to his moral strain and in stirring up very strong emotions.

His historical paintings which denounce the violence and oppression of the Mafia, find their counterpart in his paintings which depict Sicilian sunny landscapes rich in lemon,orange, olive trees, in prickly pear, agave, broom plants. They show the wealth of a land that has been kissed by God but downtrodden by man. In painting the sky of his Sicily , Porcasi uses several , different hues of blue and it’s from this sky that his pictorial journey starts.

In his paintings the history of Sicily, which has always been marked by its farmers’ sweat and blood and by their struggles for freedom and democracy, finds its pictorial expression in the fusion of the red flags of the workers with the Italian flag in a sort of Italian and Mediterranean “epopea” .The red flags and the Italian flag stand out against the blue sky that changes its hues according to the events, the seasons the deeds the moods that are painted on the canvas.

The luxuriant nature of Sicily with its beautiful, sunny , Mediterranean landscapes seems to remain the silent, unchangeable and unchanged witness of the events and the passing of time. Here people are only “accidenti” , they aren’t makers of their own life. Thus Gaetano Porcasi makes a clear-cut metaphysical distinction between a benigne, merciful nature who is devoted to good and to the respect of all its unchangeable laws and Man who breaks this natural harmony to satisfy his wild, unbridled ambition and selfishness and who becomes the perpetrator of violence and crime. Moreover, Gaetano Porcasi is an environmentalist and his commitment against any form of pollution has already cost him a lot of attacks and complaints from the Authorities.

Porcasi’s paintings share with Guttuso’s the same typical “Sicilitudine” and the same chromatic realism: his bitter orange trees with their bright-green leaves ,thorny branches and red-coloured fruits ,which are painted by the artist in rare hues, testify a complex, deep, psychological research. The juicy fruits and the prickles that spring from the branches of his orange trees are symbols of Man’s life: he is the protagonist of human history both in good and in evil. The “Sicilitudine” in Porcasi’s paintings becomes a metaphor of human life and a pretext to tell Mediterranean stories whose meaning is universal.Besides he uses a simple pictorial language, he paints with all his heart.

Some critics and amateurs are often surprised by the young age of this painter since his works imply such maturity which is rare in young people.

Porcasi’s artistic future will be something extraordinarily important and successful and this “pure” Sicilian painter will make his own mark in the world of Art.