27 COMPOSIZIONE MECCANICA - EN

27. Composizione meccanica  1960-65 , ink and watercolour on paper, 38 x 22 cm

The composition develops vertically, mainly in black and white, following a hypothetical ascending curved toothed line that starts from the bottom right, reaches the centre left and ends in the top right corner of the sheet. Two fantastic human figures are wrapped around this dynamic line, almost trapped in a moving wheel. Inside the two figures, the author outlines a schematic skeleton that makes them move mechanically. The woman at the bottom seems to control two wheels with her open hands, while the other, in the upper part, appears to be passively dragged by the movement of the gear. At the bottom right, another smaller toothed circle contains two stylised faces, similar to African masks. The background is characterised by interlocking areas drawn with hatching – continuous or intermittent – ​​horizontal, vertical or oblique. The surrounding space is saturated with various shapes, lines, circles and chiaroscuro that cancel out any space of light, helping to create and intensify the surreal setting of the work.

This description evokes a sense of chaotic and visionary dynamism. The curved line seems to impart a whirling movement to the fantastic figures; the woman, internalized in the mechanism, thus becomes the emblem of the dehumanization produced by this technological universe which, graphically constructed, presents itself as a revealing artifice of its own rudimentary and implacable functioning, while the saturation of the space with graphic elements accentuates the dreamlike and disturbing atmosphere typical of Surrealism. The absence of light helps to make the whole even denser and more mysterious.

Insights

The negativity of technology had already been perceived by Dadaism and sublimated in the total rejection of artistic technicality, but Catarsini, who came from an artistic line with high psychological tension and linked to the respect of figurative techniques, did not shy away from the challenge of depicting in an unprecedented way this contradictory relationship between human complexity and the simplification of the machine.

In 1964, Catarsini held a solo exhibition at the Galleria d’Arte Internazionale in Florence, exhibited in Padua, Livorno and Munich, where he won the Dante Alighieri prize. In 1966 he was in Paris, at the exhibition Artistes Italiens Contemporains at the Galleria “La palette bleue” and in Milan, where he won the ‘Silver Star’ at the prize promoted by the European Institute of Art History. During the Sixties he continued his experiments and, in 1969, presented three Mechanical Compositions in Lucca, before inaugurating his exhibition in Messina. In many of these works, often sketched or painted in ink, the author imagines a mechanized universe in which the figures are prisoners of gears.