Zanetta is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Akron; she also holds a B.A. in painting from the National School of Fine Arts, "Prilidiano Pueyrredon," in Buenos Aires (Argentina) and has taught art at the college level. Much of her abundant professional scholarship deals with Spanish-speaking artists (painters, filmmakers, poets, writers) across four centuries, including the 20th century. She has maintained a parallel artistic and design practice with many solo and group exhibitions, productions for print, and regular critical notice.

A yearlong residence in Italy — Tuscany and Rome — gave her the opportunity to indulge her love of landscapes, producing numerous paintings of these and of the human figure, which she was able to study intensively in life-drawing classes. Recent forays into printmaking and printing have allowed her to pursue interests in texture and color along with the variability of product that printmaking processes generate. Her work includes not only land- and city-scapes but also still lifes, figural studies, and fully abstract compositions.