33 SIMBOLISMO MECCANICO 1970 - EN

33. Simbolismo meccanico, 1970, oil on canvas, 56 x 72 cm

This horizontal work of Simbolismo meccanico is distinguished by a lively explosion of colors that animate an imaginative irregular mechanical gear, enriched by unusual notes of transparency. The whole resembles a satellite dish connected to tubes, gears and cogs. The background is an intense orange, while the various mechanical components show off a multiplicity of colors.

The image of the satellite dish suggests a connection, a transmission of ideas or perhaps an interference between the organic and artificial worlds, central themes in Catarsini’s Simbolismo meccanico.

Insights

In these years, Catarsini devoted himself to Fantastic Compositions, characterized by restless forms suspended between mechanics and nature. In these works, he arrives at a painting with increasingly evocative and lyrical tones, softened by warm colors that are combined on the palette with the rustier and darker ones that characterize the metal parts. He seems to want to exorcise the mechanism by internalizing it and changing it into natural and organic forms, causing the gears to give rise to almost physiological and biomechanical connection systems, created by pictorial artifice. The artist from Viareggio was an intellectual who cultivated and deepened his knowledge with constant study through his many acquaintances and acquaintances and active participation in the cultural life of his time, often promoting it himself. Although aware of contemporary artistic debates, he nevertheless chose not to make his philosophical beliefs explicit, preferring to express his inner feelings through artistic form, distancing himself from the rigid patterns of some avant-gardes. In particular, in the works of these years, we witness a surprising transformation of technique into nature. The tubes transform into branches, the gears convert into bright stars, creating a fantastic universe governed solely by the rules of figurative imagination.

This stylistic evolution underlines his ability to transcend mere mechanical representation to arrive at a more lyrical and visionary language. His art becomes a realm in which the boundaries between the artificial and the natural dissolve, leaving room for a free expression of fantasy. In works like this one, it seems that, after having explored the shadows and anxieties of mechanical Symbolism and its potential dystopian drifts, Catarsini arrives at a sort of reconciliation, a newfound harmony in a dreamlike and enchanted world that echoes the comfort and consolation that he had always found in the marine views, of the dock and canals of his beloved Viareggio conquered with a language that allows him to transform mechanical rigidity into organic fluidity and the coldness of metal into the warm light of the stars, just like the light of the sun.

The painting was exhibited in June 1971 at the First National Contemporary Painting Exhibition Competition in Borgosesia and, in 1981, at the Palazzo Strozzi Antological Exhibition in Florence and in 1982 at the first Exhibition entirely dedicated to these works – Alfredo Catarsini, Simbolismo meccanico, Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara

The early Seventies saw growing success and renewed interest in his work. In 1970, in fact, the Bugatti publishing house dedicated a monograph to him for the series “Protagonists of Contemporary Art” and, in 1972, the same publisher presented the various phases of his production at the Galleria d’Arte Internazionale in Florence.