32 SIMBOLISMO MECCANICO 1965 - EN
- Simbolismo meccanico, 1965, oil on cardboard, 38 x 51 cm, signed on the upper right “A. Catarsini/ 1965”.
This horizontal mechanical composition from the mid-1960s was chosen as the image for the traveling exhibition, becoming a visual metaphor for his “mechanical-surreal” art. The rounded forms almost create a spiral that moves horizontally across the entire canvas. The variety of colors—from blue to yellow to red—is striking. The immersion in the gear, its geometric rationalization, and the subsequent chromatic transfiguration describe Catarsini’s creative process and the way his visions are presented. This makes them not only the content of the exhibited works but also an integral part of the traveling exhibition experience itself. It is as if Catarsini wanted to capture the essence of his artistic world in motion and reveal his methodical approach to the theme of the machine. He starts with an almost scientific analysis, immersing himself in the gear, exploring it from the inside, deconstructing it, and geometrizing it before freeing his imagination through color, thus transforming the mechanical object into something unexpected and dreamlike.
During the 1960s, Catarsini achieved significant success and continued his “mechanical” experiments, which he had begun around 1950 and would continue into the 1980s. This was also influenced by post-Cubism and Breton’s Surrealism. His machines take on fantastic aspects, giving life to dynamic compositions of spheres and rotating discs where the surreal flows into his “phantamechanics.” These works feature circular forms, wood, and iron immersed in an informal atmospheric continuum dense with color, drips, and splashes.
His unique and personal language addresses the complex theme of the relationship between man, nature, and the machine, which had become increasingly pressing in the second half of the century. This language is developed in a direction opposite to Futurist mythologization and is not aligned with Léger’s mechanism. He also cautiously embraced the Surrealist stimulus, unlike the vehement dialectic of Breton. He invented an innovative language that starts from man’s troubled relationship with the machine and then leads to a visionary and mutable painting, characterized by continuous shifts and sudden variations in his creative process, moving between figuration, abstraction, and informal painting.