12 QUATTRO DISEGNI PER GIORNI NERI - EN

12  Four drawings from 1944 are collected in a single horizontal frame

Partigiano, 1944, ink on paper, 15 x 11 cm

This drawing depicts a young man in right profile who is advancing on unstable rural terrain, where his feet seem to sink. To support himself, he leans with his left hand on a branch used as a stick, while his right arm holds a rifle resting on his right shoulder. He is wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and his back is hunched with tiredness. The image is very evocative: the yielding ground under his steps intensifies the sensation of exhaustion and difficulty. The combination of the rural landscape, the terrain that seems to “swallow” the young man, the support of the stick, the rifle on his shoulder and the hunched back creates the figure of an individual exhausted by fatigue and perhaps uncertain of his own destiny.

Arresto, 1945, ink on paper, 15 x 11.5 cm

The drawing shows two men standing, seen from the front. One is in the foreground, the other partially hidden behind. Both have their arms raised in surrender and are wearing hats, long trousers, a belt with ammunition and a shirt, all depicted in detail. The choice to represent them full-length and frontally suggests pride and a direct confrontation with the observer. The spatial arrangement, with one figure in the foreground and the other hidden, creates a visual hierarchy and a sense of mystery. The attention to clothing details, such as the belt with ammunition, provides a war context, suggesting a recent or imminent conflict despite the gesture of submission.

Impiccati  1945, ink on paper, 17 x 9 cm;

This drawing depicts a scene of brutal violence: two men are hanged by the neck with two ropes. One is shown frontally, the other in profile to the left. They wear long trousers and a shirt, and are barefoot. Their hands are tied behind their backs and their heads are bowed. The depiction is extremely crude and tragic, evoking death by hanging. The different angles of the figures offer multiple points of view on their suffering. The simple clothing and the condition of being barefoot underline their vulnerability and humiliation. The tied hands symbolize their total impotence. The absence of a defined background focuses attention on the victims, intensifying the emotional impact of the scene and leaving the viewer the task of interpreting the context and the reasons.

Nando, 1945, ink on paper, cm 16 x 13

The drawing portrays Nando, one of the 3 protagonists of the novel Giorni neri, sitting on a rock, as if he were resting after a long walk. His left hand holds a rifle, drawn with attention to detail, resting on the ground by the butt. The image of Nando conveys a strong sense of loneliness, tiredness and introspection. The sitting position indicates a necessary pause after physical effort. The rifle, an element of potential danger or task, is supported but held ready by Nando’s hand. His solitude is evident and the thoughtful look suggests deep inner reflection, accentuated by the surrounding silence. Nando appears tired from fatigue, but his mind seems active. The absence of a detailed background focuses attention on his solitary figure, his expression and his posture.

Insights

These four vertical drawings belong to the seven illustrations of the novel “Giorni neri” and to a vast set of graphic, literary and documentary materials carefully preserved in the Historical Archive of the Catarsini Foundation 1899. They testify to his predisposition for writing, which will later materialize in the activity of publicist and in the writing of many articles and two novels: the unpublished “Tra l’incudine e il martello”, soon to be published, and “Giorni neri”, republished in 2021 by La nave di Teseo. The latter is set in the period in which Catarsini, displaced in San Martino in Freddana, worked on the fresco of the apse of the local church.

The novel Giorni neri

Starting in June 1944, Val Freddana was hit with particular violence by German reprisals against partisan incursions. The liberation in Garfagnana, Versilia, Viareggio and Lucchesia was, in fact, marked by a succession of clashes and bloody events that occurred in the provinces of Lucca and Massa Carrara between September 1944 and April 1945, during the military campaign in which the Allies, with the help of local partisan formations, tried to break through the Tyrrhenian front of the Gothic Line. There was considerable destruction and many civilians were killed in reprisals, along with numerous partisans and priests.

These episodes are remembered in the series of drawings that illustrate the novel Giorni neri, with figures of evacuees, partisans, hostages and prisoners that revolve around a man of the sea, Nando, whose life “is on boats, among sailors with his gaze fixed on the horizon”. His existence is destined to intersect with that of the other protagonists of the novel and “to converge in the common struggle against the oppressor”. Catarsini paints with words and, as Cristina Acidini acutely observes, with a wise “verbal dosage of colors, so sparing as to be surprising in an artist like Catarsini, used to expressing himself by painting with vivid and mellow chromatic ranges”. Giordano Bruno Guerri, in the introductory note of the novel, writes that Catarsini “was also a writer capable of recounting the horrible days of the civil war with mastery” assigning “a character of his own to each character”.