15 NATURA MORTA CON BOTTIGLIA DI SELTZ- EN
15. Natura morta con bottiglia di Seltz, 1946, oil on canvas, 35.5 x 45.5 cm
This horizontal still life (1944-45) marks a turning point in Catarsini’s color, with strong chromatic contrasts and a figurative research that will lead him to his original “Riflessismo”. The work portrays a corner of his studio, where the reflection of canvases and objects on the glass of a window generates an overlapping of shapes “sculpted” by color contrasts. In the foreground on the left you can see two glasses, while in the center, moved to the right, two bottles (one of which is Seltzer, of an intense blue) mix with canvases sketched in the background, characterized by vivid and defined colors and intertwined geometric shapes.
Insights
In the early months of the post-war period, Catarsini returned to the landscapes and figures that had marked his previous success, exhibiting them in 1945 at the First Art Exhibition in Viareggio and at the Provincial Art Exhibition of the Società Belle Arti in Lucca. However, it is the period that represents a crucial and breaking point in his career, an affirmation of his absolute expressive freedom with a renewal that is not only stylistic, with his new palette of chromatic contrasts, but also conceptual, with the emergence of a completely original pictorial language. The Riflessismo as the artist defined himself, which focuses on the dynamic interaction between perceived and reflected reality, opening up new avenues of representation.
By capturing that precise “moment” in his atelier, Catarsini does not simply paint objects, but an ephemeral and complex visual event, generated by the play of light and reflections on the glass. This choice denotes a desire to go beyond traditional representation, exploring the potential of chance and subjective perception.
Catarsini himself explained that when observing a painting reflected in glass, the composition was enriched with overlapping shapes. This phase highlights a “search for ambiguity”, as Franco Solmi points out, and an exploration of the “fantastic everyday”, where painting becomes a “reflecting reflection”. In 1981 Catarsini himself, quoting Breton in 1981, underlines the importance of observing things deeply and how, by reflecting objects, unexpected shapes and perspectives are produced. Thus this painting seems to capture a moment full of visual suggestions, transforming an everyday scene of the atelier into a work that explores his perception of reality and his own creative process within his studio. The resulting “overlapping of shapes and objects” that characterizes the works of the Riflessismo period, is not accidental, but becomes the fulcrum of his research, a way to destabilize the conventional vision and invite the observer to question the very nature of reality and its artistic representation. The use of strong chromatic contrasts in this context only accentuates this visual complexity, “sculpting” the forms emerging from the play of reflections.
This phase of Riflessismo testifies to a moment of great creative ferment for Catarsini, a bold and conceptually stimulating exploration that leads him to define his own very personal artistic language under the banner of “absolute freedom”, a prelude to what will happen a few years later with his Simbolismo Meccanico.