29 COMPOSIZIONE MECCANICA CON FIGURA FEMMINILE - EN

29.  Composizione meccanica con figura femminile 1970, mixed media on paper, 50 x 35 cm,

In this vertical graphic creation, the synthetic female figure appears from the front, she is young with barely hinted facial features, half-closed eyes and with the bust slightly off-center and inclined to the left; she dominates the composition by opening her arms, almost as if she wanted to show the world the fruit she has given birth to, and which consists of a toothed circle crossed by eight rays that emerge from the circumference. Other circular structures reappear in the breasts, in the background and in those external to the figure, included within converging obliques or lighter or darker triangular bands that give depth through the half-tones of the graininess of the color with highlights in blue, gray and pink on a dark background.

In this drawing, surrealist suggestions, the underlying symbolism of her temperament and the constant expressionist of her artistic imagination converge.

Insights

In Catarsini’s art, as has been said, the principle of humanity is almost always represented through the woman, a fallen divinity of the natural world and a mother who has generated a world that imprisons her in its gears.

The Seventies opened with a growing interest in his work and the gold medals received at the Salon Babylon in Paris in 1971 and the success at the VII Premio Uliveto Terme for his Mechanical Compositions.

In the monograph dedicated to him, published in 1970 by Bugatti, Pier Carlo Santini wrote: “(…) Today Catarsini explores the world of machines: archaic machines within environments saturated with fumes and smoke: wheels, pulleys, coils, steering wheels that can be glimpsed absorbed within enigmatic signs, or that suddenly stand out among the corrupted and oozing matter. And together with these devices of uncertain destination but assigned destiny we see emanations and divergent rays, with presences and fluids that contaminate the air and suffocate the breath. It is a way, that of Catarsini, of reiterating the solitude of man overwhelmed by that mechanism that he has created with his own hands (…)”. Catarsini’s reflection in the 1960s, oscillating between admiration for human ingenuity and attraction to the potential and contradictions inherent in technological progress on the one hand and awareness of the conflict between nature and technology on the other, resonates today with even greater force.

Just think of the environmental challenges we are facing, the debate on artificial intelligence and its impact on work and society. Catarsini’s intuition, which he translated into Mechanical Symbolism, seems almost prophetic, already grasping the complex dynamics that characterize our present.

It is remarkable how Alfredo Catarsini was able to intercept themes of such universal scope and still so urgent. His “thematic bifurcation” no longer appears as a simple artistic dichotomy, but as a lucid analysis of the forces at play in the contemporary world.