A native New Yorker, Michael Pellettieri has been painting and making prints since his youth.  After graduating from the High School of Music and Art, he began   a program of studies at the New School with John Ross followed by a full time program of drawing, painting and printmaking at the Art Students League of New York. There he studied with Harry Sternberg, Edwin Dickinson, Robert Beverly Hale and Joseph Hirsch.

Pellettieri started exhibiting his work in New York and around the country in 1966.  He received a State Department Grant to travel and study in India in 1969, This was followed by numerous awards in national and international printmaking exhibitions.  In 1988 he was awarded a MacDowell Colony Fellowship for printmaking. In 1991he received an award for painting by the Ben and Beatrice Goldstein Foundation and in 2002 an Burr Miller award for lithography from the Society of American Graphic Artists.

He has been represented by The Associated American Artists, Weyhe Gallery The New Renaissance Gallery and is currently represented by The Old Print Shop.  His painting and prints have also been exhibited at the National Academy of Design and nominated for consideration for the Childe Hassam award in painting at the American Academy of Arts and Letters. 

He has been teaching classes in printmaking, drawing and painting at the Art Students League since 1977 and currently teaches a comprehensive class in printmaking.  He taught printmaking at Columbia University from 1987 to 2006.

Numerous public and private collections have acquired his work including: The National Gallery in Washington DC, The Library of Congress, The New York Public Library, The Newark Art Library, The DeCordova Museum, MA,  The Columbia Museum in SC, The Dave and Reba Williams Collection and The Art Students League of New York.