17 VECCHIO CANTIERE - EN

Seventeen 17. Vecchio cantiere 1952, oil on cardboard, 34 x 24 cm

In this small vertical work, the solid compositional construction is entrusted to the profiles of the shipyard buildings and their reflections in the water of the dock, highlighted by dark vertical and horizontal lines. In the foreground, the canal occupies almost half of the painting horizontally, while the definition of the depth is entrusted to the skilful tonal contrasts of the warmer or colder colors, of the yellows, the oranges,

the blues, laid out to follow the shape of the typical building that houses the shipyard and which impose themselves on the more agitated brushstrokes of the sky and on the more summary ones of the water, allowing the background of the panel to show through.

Insights

In this work, Catarsini seems to use the reflection of the elements on the water to generate a marked effect of two-dimensional flattening in the lower half of the painting, almost as if to temper the greater solidity of the volumes in the upper part. Viareggio has always represented for the artist a deep bond with his roots, a constant source of inspiration that has allowed him to develop an international culture without ever denying his origins. In the docks and canals of his city, he found the essence of his first emotions. It was here, in the 1930s, that he and other artists organized the first auction of paintings in support of the Lega Maestri d’ascia and Calafati during a long strike. These places seem to constantly revive his creative spirit, since, as Tommaso Paloscia states, the “dock in Catarsini’s painting carries with it over time the re-proposal of some elements that will then play an almost always primary role (…): the structure of the composition, the line sign that is decisive for direction and incisiveness in the configuration of objects (…)”.