14 NATURA MORTA - EN

14.  Natura morta, 1943, oil on canvas board, 45 x 55.5 cm

This horizontal still life is dominated by ochre and brown tones with reddish accents. It depicts some objects arranged on a table leaning against a wall, with the horizontal plane occupying the lower part of the painting. On the left, in the foreground, there are dark and rounded shapes that resemble potatoes and pears. Behind them, a whitish Nautilus shell has red streaks and brown shades. On the right, a glass in the foreground and a glass vase with a lid in the background are rendered with thick reddish and brown brushstrokes that deny transparency and give all the elements a patina that unifies the support surface with the wall behind and both with the objects themselves.

Insights

During his long career, Catarsini devoted himself assiduously to still life, studying the

Composition, form and silent essence of the natural world. His still lifes, like the work of 1943, appear as refined poems of everyday objects, elevated to “mirabilia” that are dressed in new colors. The works of the war period, characterized by full-bodied brush strokes, are distinguished by a research independent of the reactionary tendencies of the regime. An example is the “Still life with newspapers” of 1942, where an issue of “Il Frontespizio” appears, a literary magazine of Catholic inspiration founded in Florence in 1929 that was located in the painter’s atelier. Among the main Catholic magazines in Italy between the two wars, it published the woodcuts of Pietro Parigi and the flowers and figures of Giacomo Manzù, Il Frontespizio tried to remain autonomous from political power and to recover religious values ​​in art and literature. The magazine featured the European and anti-traditional voices of Bo, Luzi and Parronchi, alongside the Lacerbian Tuscanism of Bargellini, Barna Occhini and Papini and the poetry of everyday values ​​of Lisi and Betocchi. It ceased publication in 1940.