28 NUDO - EN

28. Nudo, 1960-65 ink and watercolour on paper, 42 x 30 cm

The vertical work shows a female body framed from the lower part of the thighs to the shoulders, barely outlined together with the neck and arms that can be glimpsed open and up and out.

The figure occupies all the space and is outlined by a plastic, nervous and synthetic line, which highlights the anatomical shapes of the contours, the belly and the breasts, giving it a strong sensuality and an almost feline aggressiveness. The shadows and chiaroscuro are rendered, instead, through the blacks and shades of grey obtained by diluting the ink diluted and spread with a brush on the sheet of paper.

Insights

This torso dates back to the first half of the Sixties, when Catarsini, a drawing teacher at the “Stagio Stagi” in Pietrasanta, found a way to measure himself, in an original way, with a repertoire of subjects also favored by sculpture.

The drawing highlights, once again, the expressionist roots of his art, which charges the sign with a dramatic tension perhaps attributable to the line of the new existential realism that developed in the second half of the 1950s and which saw among its protagonists also the sculptor Francesco Messina.

In 1961, together with Leonida Répaci, Messina visited the “Stagi” Institute of Pietrasanta, invited by Catarsini as part of the projects he carried out, which included the renovation of the Institute’s art library and lessons held by important artists and writers.

Like Messina in other areas, the painter characterizes his work through a strong bond with artistic tradition, making it coexist with the modernity of a language developed from time to time with the awareness of the reality of his own time.