Othello Michetti came to America with his family when he was ten and settled in New York. He studied artw1th Frank. Vincent Dumond and George Bridgman at the Art Students League and then attended the Academy of Art. When he was twenty-one, he moved to San Francisco, where he continued his art education and began painting regularly with water­colors.

He worked in a representational style with transparent paints, depicting farm scenes, mining camps, and Northern California landscapes. In the 1930's, he began to travel to Mexico, where he painted coastal villages and local people. In recent years, he traveled, painted, and sketched in other parts of the world, including Europe, Alaska, and Japan.

Michetti actively exhibited his watercolors on the West Coast for over fifty years and was a director of the Society of Western Artists from the time of its formation. Between 1921 and the early 1970's he was the art director of a major San Francisco commercial lithographic furn. He was considered an authority on color design for commercial uses, gave lectures on the subject regularly, and wrote a trade booklet, Color Harmony, which explained his theories.

Biographical information:

Interview with Louise Michetti, 1983.