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For those who want to feel part of a place,rather than simply pass through it.

There is a Catania to be read between the lines.

In Catania, an artist's home. Inside, books and paintings. Outside, beyond Villa Bellini, the city.

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The house

A house open to guests the way you open it to friends.

The entrance to Fra le Righe, with an olive tree in the foreground and decorative figures on the wall in the background.

Iron, wood, paper, canvas. These are the materials of the house.

The sitting room: the fire lit, the chessboard, the cat in the armchair

An iron spiral staircase rises to the terrace like a sculpture; herringbone parquet flows through the rooms, and books sit alongside vinyl records.

The library shelves with records and the turntable

Art books are found throughout the house, ready to be picked up and leafed through. There are records to choose from, too.

A book on Basquiat lying open beneath a sculpture and a painting

An intimate welcome,a terrace,the historic centre just a few steps away.

The rooms

Three spaces, each with a different light. Sottotesto, Contrappunto, Origami. Three ways of reading the same house: what is sensed, what enters into dialogue, what takes shape.

Sottotesto

What is sensed.

The largest of the three suites. Quiet, with three large French doors opening onto its private terrace, a breakfast corner, a study and a sofa. A bathtub sits beyond an opening in the wall. Original paintings lead the eye from one corner of the room to the next.

Sottotesto: the floating basin beneath the lit mirror, with the jacuzzi tub beside it
Sottotesto: the balcony, with the round mirror and the console

Contrappunto

What enters into dialogue.

The most personal of the three. An asymmetrical suite: a generous armchair in dialogue with the iron canopy bed; a mobile sculpture turning slowly, while the house's most geometric paintings meet the softness of the fabrics. The room looks onto the inner garden, away from the city. Nothing matches, yet everything holds together.

Contrappunto: the bed against the ochre wall with two dark canvases
Contrappunto: the fabric armchair and the oval mirror
Contrappunto: the lit opening towards the bathroom

Origami

What takes shape.

For those drawn to essential design. A wooden desk and chairs, a red bench cutting across the floor, a black leather armchair. The room's clean lines echo the rationalist language of the house, designed by Marletta in the 1940s. Outside, a private balcony overlooking the city.

Origami: the orange bed beneath the painting of a seated figure
Origami: the wooden mannequin and an open book on the desk
Origami: the white tiled wall with the red bench

You climb an iron staircase,and the house carries on upstairs,in the open air.

The terrace

Sicilian plants, earth, water and glass. In the morning, the terrace has a voice of its own.

Breakfast and the evening

The same terrace at two different hours: when the morning table is laid, and when the screen comes down.

Then you come back down,and the house still hassomething to show.

The collection and the studio

Paintings and objects collected over time are part of everyday life here. In the atelier, new works continue to take shape.

San Berillo: a large painted face with blue eyes and red lips on a gutted house front, among potted trees and a white chair hung on the balcony railing

Catania & surroundings

Painted shutters, signed façades, the lanes of San Berillo coloured from top to bottom. In Catania street art isn't kept in a museum: you come across it a short walk from the house, along the way.

Explore Catania and its surroundings

The rest, in person.