Joseph Gatto remembered as inspiring teacher: ‘All he did was give’

Former students of longtime art teacher Joseph Gatto said they were stunned and saddened by news of his fatal shooting and are having difficulty understanding how their beloved mentor met such a violent death.

Gatto, the father of state Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D-Los Angeles), was found shot to death at his Silver Lake home Monday evening after he didn’t show up to a weekly dinner with his daughter. Police said they don’t know the motive for the killing but are looking into the possibility of a robbery.

Joseph Gatto began working at the Los Angeles County High School For The Arts as chairman of the visual arts department when it was founded in 1985. Now one of his former students has the job -- a position she took at his urging.

“I was Mr. Gatto’s student 20 years ago when I went to LACHSA, and he was an incredible friend and mentor and teacher, and all of us are just forever grateful for him,” Malaika Zweig Latty said. “I told the principal today that I would never have even applied for this job if it wasn’t for Mr. Gatto.”

“I can’t even imagine how many thousands of people are affected by coming into contact with him as a teacher and as an advocate of the arts. He was someone that opened the door for us to realize that it’s a possible life.”

Gatto had a distinctive teaching style. Some described it as no-nonsense and tough, but Latty said he was “magical in the way that he could kind of reveal what it is that his student was making.”

“I think his gift was to allow the individual student to see better,” she said. “It was much more about a search and much less about a product.”

Sometimes he would ask students: “Are you trying to please your mom with this drawing? Or are you trying to draw what you see?”

Often, he would end conversations by saying, “Peace and love,” Latty recalled.

“It’s so unfair. He was so generous,” Latty said. “It’s so unjust that someone could take from him, because all he did was give.”

She said the school is planning a memorial and has begun reaching out to other alumni.

“He was a legend,” she said. “I would just want to say that my whole heart goes out to his family and I hope that they know that he is so loved and that he will be remembered as a generous, loving man and such an incredible, strong advocate for the arts.”

Artist Kent Twitchell, 71, who counts himself among Gatto’s friends, first met him decades ago when Gatto began teaching at the arts high school.

“I just immediately liked him,” Twitchell said. He described Gatto as “so full of life” and with “so much to give.”

Gatto “truly loved” his students, Twitchell said, “and they knew it.”

“He never tried to make them like him. I think they just appreciated him because he was authentic and he really cared about them,” he said.

After Gatto retired from teaching, he became increasingly involved in jewelry and silversmithing and would often go on trips to sell his work and look at other crafts.

Mat Gleason, owner of Coagula Curatorial in Los Angeles’ Chinatown neighborhood, worked alongside Gatto at LACHSA for a few years as an art history instructor.

Gleason said that in many ways, Gatto was a “mythological character” in the memories of students.

“He was like an extreme advocate for his kids. I don’t know if any of them realized,” he said. “A lot of people teach as a job and at 3 o’clock they become someone else. But Joe Gatto was working for those kids all the time.”

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ari.bloomekatz@latimes.com