Filandro Lattanzio

Filandro Lattanzio, Vasto 1908–1986. He was one of the greatest painters from Vasto in the twentieth century. His attachment to his native town was always strong. After living almost entirely away from Vasto, in the 1970s he could not resist the pull of the places of his childhood, which he had never forgotten, and returned to live there permanently. This emotional bond was also one of devotion, cemented by the donation of two works on religious themes: the first to the Madonna dei Settedolori in 1982, and the second, two years later, to the church of Sant'Anna.

Two years after his death, in March 1988, Mrs Hélèn Castex, the artist's wife, donated twenty works to the Comune that span the whole of Filandro Lattanzio's artistic life, from the "Autoritratto" of 1933 to a cubist nude, passing through several portraits and still lifes. Lattanzio's work deserves to be better known and studied in greater depth, precisely because of the vastness of his output: over three thousand paintings produced by the Vasto-born painter in more than fifty years of career.