19 BIMBA ALL'ATELIER - EN
19. Bimba all’Atelier 1945-49, oil on plywood, 75 x 60 cm
Almost as if she did not realize she was being portrayed, the girl in this vertical work is sitting three-quarters to the left on the green armchair of the Atelier; she occupies the right and central part of the painting and is depicted only up to her legs. Her attitude is typical of children and her slightly raised dress leaves her thighs uncovered. Her open arms rest on the armrests and her head is tilted to the left as she turns her gaze to the right out of the frame; she is wearing a light blue dress and a white collar. Her luminous figure shines, enclosed in the bright green shell of the inevitable armchair and the pile of books stacked on the table to the left, another constant presence in the painter’s atelier. The objects and shapes of the little girl are outlined with a thick dark outline, which encloses the fields of color, spread with quick and confident brush strokes that create volumes without chiaroscuro modeling, by simple chromatic juxtaposition, by contrast between warmer and colder, brighter or darker shades.
Insights
The painting can be dated stylistically to the second half of the 1940s and is probably comparable to Bambina in Poltrona, exhibited in 1949 at the III Premio Nazionale di Pittura “F. P. Michetti” in Francavilla al Mare and not yet identified.
The lightening of Catarsini’s palette, which is chromatically enriched in the brightening of the tones, typical of his post-war production, can be seen in many of the artist’s works, from the portraits of his wife and daughter to the numerous landscapes of Viareggio, as well as in the wonderful image of this carefree doll looking off-screen, wrapped in the bright blue dress that ruffles her legs and with a red bow on her delicately bowed head.
The painting attests, alongside the more experimental works, the continuity of those more familiar to him, which is already recorded in the First Post-War Viareggio Summer Exhibition, in which he exhibits two Darsene and a Self-Portrait and in the Provincial Art Exhibition of the Società Belle Arti di Lucca, in which he takes part in the autumn of 1945 with two still lifes and a landscape.