30 COMPOSIZIONE ASTRATTA - EN

30. Composizione astratta, 1950, ink and watercolor on paper, 49 x 34.5 cm

The vertical composition is distinguished by the use of orthogonal lines, circles and rectangles, black geometric elements that define the occupation of space and structure a central layout on the white sheet.

This description suggests a rational and constructive approach and the use of precise geometric shapes and the centrality of the structure indicates an investigation of space and form more linked to a sense of order and a more conceptual representation.

It is interesting to note how Catarsini explores different compositional modes within his surrealist vein.

Insights

The distinctive signs that we see in this work are found in the paintings of Simbolismo meccanico made between the 1960s and 1970s, while the more informal signs and traces are comparable to the brush strokes with which he weaves the texture of his seascapes or the backgrounds of his figures.

Even the geometric two-dimensionality of the abstract composition is balanced by the depth obtained through half-tones, black ink hatching and watercolor shades, further demonstrating that his technical choice is always functional to the expressive outcome.

With the reduction of color to black and white, it seems that the author wants to get to the essential structure of reality, through abstraction, taking his usual operating methods to the extreme consequences, which combine perspective geometrization and freedom of the brushstroke, in a process of purification of the natural object that arrives at its geometric synthesis.

In the late 1940s, Catarsini also approached abstraction. There are not many of his non-objective works and this Composition exhibited in the exhibition is one of the first tests in which he measures himself with geometric abstraction, which will be resumed around 1970 with vaguely surrealist veins, almost as a digression from his Simbolismo meccanico.

His path, in fact, is not made up of periods that end but, rather, of linguistic choices that respond to the inner need of the moment, even if always coherently linked to his central figurative nucleus. He looked carefully and curiously at the different expressive experiences and then absorbed them over time, naturally, distilling and almost purifying them, creating his own style. As the painter himself recalled, “Art is more form than content, the subject is nothing but a pretext, the form must resist the investigation of time (…) there is no problem of moving from the abstract to the figurative and vice versa, for the artist it is the same (…)”. In his production it is possible to identify the beginning of a certain figurative choice, but rarely is it possible to identify its conclusion. The date in which new perspectives opened up for him can certainly be 1948 with his participation in the XXIV Biennale di Venezia, which recorded the presence, now mature and qualified, of the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti, projected into the international context, which presented the Manifesto of Neo-Cubism. The suggestions that came from that climate pushed him to seek new forms of expression of feeling, managing to draw from the direct vision of the most innovative works – also seen at the Gran Premio Forte dei Marmi – those stimuli that led him, with greater awareness of his own work, towards paths that he had already prefigured with the experiments of his Riflessismo.