23 LO STOCCAFISSO - EN
23. Lo stoccafisso, 1950, oil on canvas, 70 x 50 cm
The vertical painting shows a stockfish, the dried cod fish that, although it comes from Norway, was together with the salacchino (herring) a common dish on the tables of Viareggio, for the advantage of being able to be preserved for a long time. Catarsini has always been interested in representing aspects of everyday life and local traditions of Viareggio, just as he did with the landscapes of the dock or the scenes of work.
The painting stands out for its material solidity, unusual for the time. This still life presents the fish whole and without the head, the yellowish and light shaded colors of the background highlight its pot-bellied and flat shape with the darker dorsal part. Hung by the tail with a rope along a wall in a warm and vibrant light, it evokes Rembrandt’s “Slaughtered Ox” in a marine key. The density of the chalky color, spread like plaster, gives the work an almost informal appearance, balanced by the thick outline of the fish.
Insights
The painting can probably be linked to Gli stoccafissi with which, in 1958, the author obtained an honorary diploma and a medal at the thirty-ninth Competition Exhibition organized by the Società Belle Arti and the Circolo Artisti di Firenze.
The work reveals Catarsini’s constant research in the construction of form and space, through a realist language that analyzes the anatomy of the object with structural signs and lines, similar to his approach in portraying faces, bodies or landscapes. This attention to the “skeleton of reality”, pursued since the beginning through drawing, with strong lines and shadows, without virtuosity, recalls Viani’s dry expressiveness. During the 1950s his exhibition activity was intense, in Lucca, Versilia and Viareggio, which hosted many of his exhibitions, both personal and collective at “La bottega dei Vàgeri” founded in 1942 by Cristoforo ‘Krimer’ Mercati and Elpidio Jenco and at the Centro Versiliese delle Arti, also founded by Krimer in the post-war period. The latter, in 1956, organized a collective at the Lindau Museum, on the German shore of Lake Constance, in which Catarsini also participated. His works were also exhibited in Rome, Naples, Genoa, Livorno, Trieste and Francavilla al Mare. The numerous Florentine exhibitions stand out, so much so that the Tuscan capital is the second city that has hosted, after Viareggio, the greatest number of its exhibitions, from Mezzo Secolo d’Arte Toscana at Palazzo Strozzi, to the National Portrait Exhibition at the Casa di Dante, from the First Exhibition of Contemporary Italian Drawing, organized at the Logge degli Uffizi by the Compagnia del Paiolo, to the National Competition organized, precisely, by the Società Belle Arti and the Circolo degli Artisti