The Art of Traditional Italian

Lucio Galletto in his restaurant. - Photograph by Anson Smart

Lucio Galletto, of Lucio’s Italian Restaurant in Sydney, is not only a successful restaurateur, he is also a beloved patron of artists and their art. This love of art is showcased at his restaurant, where the walls are covered in artworks from many leading contemporary Australian artists. All of them are from his private collection, given to him over the years by his artist friends.

Lucio grew up in a village on the Ligurian coast of Italy. His parents had a restaurant and it was while working there that Lucio decided that sharing food with others was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. And it was there that his passion for art was born: ‘Before I loved art, I loved artists because when I was in Italy they were the window to the world.’

Lucio’s passion for food and art come together in his new cookbook, The Art of Traditional Italian, an exciting collaboration between Lucio and his friends.

‘For me, the art of cooking has always been inseparable from the art of hospitality, and over more than 30 years at Lucio’s we have welcomed artists to our restaurant and proudly hung their works on our walls. So when we started gathering recipes for a new cookbook, it seemed only natural that art would share the pages with food. The artists were each given a chapter or other element of the book, and were then free to respond to the recipes and stories in any way they liked. The results exceeded anything I could have hoped for.’

Original artworks from ten of Australia’s finest artists – John Olsen, Luke Sciberras, Hilarie Mais, Garry Shead, Salvatore Zofrea, Euan Macleod, Joshua McPherson, Peter Godwin, Jason Benjamin and John Beard – accompany Lucio’s favourite traditional Italian recipes. It is a tribute to Lucio’s generosity and friendship with the artists that they generously created the artwork and donated it for display in the book.

We've put together a small selection of the artworks and food from this fantastic collaboration in The Art of Traditional Italian below.