35 IL GRANO DELLA BONIFICA LUCCHESE - EN

35. Il grano della bonifica lucchese, 1940, oil on canvas, 233 x 300 cm

The large painting depicts the day of threshing wheat in the countryside between Viareggio and Lake Massaciuccoli, which takes place in the yard in front of a farmhouse. On the left in the background you can see the lake, the area of ​​the hills of Massarosa and some red roofs of farmhouses, while on the right you can see some roofs in the distance and a canal with the typical little house with a veranda on the water, a cow lying on the green lawn near the canal and a farmer busy arranging sandbags. On the left of the painting, the large thresher dominates, which partially covers the farmers’ house, a typical Tuscan farmhouse with two white turrets and red roofs. The thresher is a beautiful brick red color, above it there are some farmers arranging by hand the bundles of harvested wheat that will be threshed. In the sky above them, you can see some electric wires strung between the poles and on one of them, almost in the center of the background of the painting, a small Italian flag flies.

Coming closer to us, in an intermediate plane, in front of the thresher, there is the farmyard that occupies the entire painting; it is covered with an expanse of ears of wheat just harvested in bundles of yellow-gold color that illuminate the entire painting; men and women work there, on various levels and occupying all the space, with handkerchiefs and large hats to protect themselves from the sun.

On the left in the foreground, three men depicted from behind, with long pitchforks moving the bundles to bring them closer to the machine. On the right side of the painting in the foreground, a pregnant woman is portrayed standing in profile to the left; she holds a large copper bucket of water on her head and keeps her gaze low to check on a delightful little girl standing in profile to the left. The little girl has red cheeks and is dressed in blue and holds the hem of her dress from which some red cherries are about to fall while she is distracted by the men’s work.

The yellow-gold of the ears of corn, the red of the thresher and the other pastel and shaded colours of the characters stand out against the green of the countryside and the grey of the distant hills, giving the painting great luminosity. The good state of preservation allows us to appreciate the chromatic choices and the pictorial layout.

Insights

As Rodolfo Bona writes, “In 1939 Catarsini sent to Cremona the Discorso del Duce heard on the radio by the villagers of a village – 2 0ttobre XIII, a large composition that allowed him to express, in addition to his skills as a landscape painter, also those of a painter of groups of figures, capable of dominating vast painted surfaces. He won the second prize exequo and the following year he participated again with this work. He was the only Tuscan artist to attend all three editions of the exhibition, from 1939 to 1941. The painting was appreciated both in Italy and in Hannover, where it was exhibited the same year as part of the cultural twinning between the two cities.

Of the three works that Catarsini brought to the Cremona Prize and of which all traces have been lost, the only one that returned to Viareggio is Il grano della bonifica lucchese. This work was considered lost until 2009, then it was lost track until 2021 when it became part of the Catarsini Foundation collection.

Main exhibitions: Second Cremona Prize, Palazzo Affaitati, May-July 1940; Künstlerhaus in Hannover 1940; Seravezza 2009, in Culture of the land in Tuscany 2009; The grain of the Lucchese reclamation, Gallery of modern and contemporary art “L. Viani”, Viareggio, 17 January-6 March 2022; Lucca 2022, in Alfredo Catarsini 2022, pp. 29-32. From March 2022 to December 2023 the work was exhibited in the Provincial Council Hall in Lucca Palazzo Ducale and from 27 December 2023 the canvas is exhibited in Forte dei Marmi, in the Villa Bertelli Foundation, Quarto Platano Museum, a stop on the Cammino I lioghi di Catarsini conceived by the Alfredo Catarsini Foundation 1899 and created in collaboration with the Touring Club Italiano.

The work was temporarily moved for the loan to the exhibitions “Il Novecento di Catarsini. Dalla macchia alla macchina” (Gardone Riviera, Vittoriale degli Italiani, March 9 – September 8, 2024), “Art and Fascism” (Rovereto, MART, April 14 – September 29, 2024) and for the traveling exhibition “Il Novecento di Catarsini. Dalla macchia alla macchina” at Palazzo Sagrati Strozzi, Florence from June 26 to July 18, 2025.