3 DOPPIO AUTORITRATTO- EN

3. Doppio autoritratto 1934, oil on plywood, 59 x 73 cm

This horizontal self-portrait, iconographically complex and expressively intense, exemplifies Catarsini’s research on the figure, in line with the trends of Italian painting of the 1930s.

In the work, the artist refers to illustrious models, portraying himself at work by showing himself at work in front of the easel, and portraying himself behind the plywood board in the foreground, as if he were intent on executing the painting itself. With an intense gaze directed at the viewer, Catarsini presents himself in a dual and simultaneous vision: frontal and reflected in profile on the right. His face, framed by thick dark hair combed back and a white shirt, is modeled with marked chiaroscuro on the complexion and with earthy browns that make it emerge from the lighter and more fluid background.

Insights

This painting, found in Florence in 2022 and dated 1936, was known from the photo kept in the Archive, which bears the date “1936” and the signature of Felice Carena, attesting to the relationship with the older colleague professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence who was a member of the jury of the 1939 Cremona Prize, an edition in which Catarsini obtained the second prize ex-aequo with Discorso del Duce heard on the radio by the villagers of a village. During 1934, Catarsini participated with Lorenzo Viani in the Mostra Marinara in the premises of the Italian Naval League in Viareggio and in the First Summer Exhibition of Viareggio at the Kursaal. In a solo exhibition at the Naval League in Viareggio he exhibited his only documented Aeropittura, while, the following year, he presented fifteen works again in the premises of the Kursaal. In 1935, still with Viani, he exhibited at the Second Versilian Art Exhibition in Pietrasanta and, in October, in Florence for the VIII Trade Union Art Exhibition of Tuscany.