Ettore Morteo Biography
Ettore Morteo was born in 1874 in Alassio, in the province of Savona. He began his artistic training at the Accademia Ligustica and exhibited for the first time in 1897 at the Genoese promoting society.
Morteo distinguished himself as an impressionist painter, preferring a material brushstroke and bright color tones, including purple. He painted genre scenes, landscapes, seascapes, but he dedicated himself in particular to the representation of views of old Genoa and the coasts, remaining linked to the nineteenth-century pictorial tradition.
Among his best-known works are "A corner of the Foce", "San Giacomo di Carignano", "Church of Sturla", "Porta Soprana", "Alassio and the sea", "Vico Zuccarello", "Vico Damiata", " Ancient square of San Silvestro" and "Vico Garaventa".
In 1920 he was elected Academician of Merit at the Ligustica Academy and also tried his hand at fresco painting, decorating the ceiling of the post office in Alassio with the scene of the "Saracens in sight". In 1926 he published a collection of poems in dialect, entitled "Rime arascine".
He actively participated in various Genoese exhibitions, also interpreting the divisionism technique in a personal way. The work "Alassio and its sea" was exhibited in 1968 at Palazzo Cattaneo Mallone in Genoa, on the occasion of the exhibition "Graphic and pictorial elements between the 10th and 20th centuries".
The Municipality of Genoa purchased three of his works for its own collections, while many of his works are kept in the Gallery of Modern Art of Genoa and in various private collections.
Ettore Morteo died in Genoa in 1939
