Susy Gatto (born on 1st July, 1971) is only 19 when she starts her artistic career as an artisan; “a start by pure chance” as she herself defines it, enrolling in a training course on the construction and reproduction techniques of the figures of the Neapolitan crib of the seventeenth century. Afterwards, the interest and passion for that world, for that art, have grown over time.

Just a few years after joining the world of crib art, she gains her first public acknowledgements, like in 1995 when she wins ‘Emma Sorace Award’ – art section.

Only some years later, precisely in 1999, she joins the ‘Amici del Presepe’ Italian Association in Naples. Since then, she has been taking part into exhibitions and events, letting her creations cross the regional and national borders.

Susy Gatto reproduces the 18th century’s shepherds of the Neapolitan presepe, respecting the techniques and materials of the tradition, without adding any innovation which would alter that delicate 300-year-old balance between the hand of the artist and the material to shape, to model and give “life”.
Ideas, expressions, attitudes and postures are thus carved in the faces, hands and bodies of her figures; and in those who observe them, the mental passage from verisimilitude to realism is immediate.

Men and women from a remote past, frozen in an eternal and stupified moment: this is what you will feel by looking at some of Susy’s creations.

Several are the projects which have let her transfer skills, techniques and passion for the Neapolitan crib art to adults and children, both by teaching into school projects and by taking part into wider projects aimed at re-educating and reintegrating people in state of detention.

As tradition, culture and art are extraordinarily effective tools also in the field of education and social recovery.