[citation needed] After completing college he returned to Cuba in 1926, and the following year-a time noted for its importance to modern art in Cuba-exhibited his works such as Mujeres en el Río, a Deco representation of an idyllic tropical scene based on monumental female nudes.
In contrast to his radiant representation of nature and indications of a pastoral way of life, Gattorno depicted the guajiro as being emaciated and sad due to impoverished conditions.
[citation needed] Gattorno's association with socialist leaning writers tend to confirm the interpretation of some of his guajiro figures as a social critique of life in the Cuban countryside of the 1930s.
His major contribution to his generation's discourse of national ethos was an idealized vision of the land and a critical view of its most humble inhabitants, making both the primary symbols of Cuba.
In 1940 he married Portuguese-American Isabella Cabral and moved to Greenwich Village; he visited Cuba again only in 1946, but spent the next thirty years in New York City.