With his almost Victorian upbringing, he cut a gentlemanly figure and was known as a great conversationalist, a connoisseur of art history, a poet, and a lover of Mexican colonial architecture.

He married the well-known writer and activist Margarita Michelena, who bore him two children: Andrea and Jesús.

In his early years at Galas de México, Cataño designed the label for Corona beer around 1935, which is still in use.

For his paintings, he did preliminary research and worked from photographs that he took himself in Mexican villages: he portrayed ideal models of men and women with a romantic beauty very much in the popular taste.

[2] And furthermore states that: "Both affective and effective, the final product was multiplied in works that have persisted in the collective imagination of several generations of Mexicans, helping to define their notions of national identity, beauty, folklore, cinema, leisure, religion, esthetic taste, fashion, tourist resorts, and childhood.