37 FIGURA GROTTESCA - EN

37. Figura grottesca , 1980, oil on hardboard, 49 x 34 cm

The vertical painting depicts a young woman half-length in the act of bringing something to her mouth, perhaps a sandwich. Her face, three-quarters to the left and slightly bent, looks at the viewer.

It is striking for its bright and strident color, especially on the hands and face of the character. The background is streaked with yellow brush strokes, while the jacket and the shadows on the face and fingers are blue, alternating with whites, grays, the lighter shades of the flesh and the dark mass of hair.

More linear black brush strokes irregularly outline the wider ones that roughly model the shoulders.

Insights

The deformations and colors of the figure recover the wild primitivism of early twentieth-century expressionism that, from the Fauves and the Brücke, will arrive in the second half of the twentieth century through some of the protagonists of the École de Paris.

The painting is dated 1980, the year in which the author participated, together with the most important painters of Versilia, in a collective exhibition at the Galleria “L’approdo” in Lido di Camaiore in which works by Viani and Galileo Chini were also exhibited. The same year he met Vittorio Grieco who would order, in 1981, his anthological exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi, with over 200 works.

The expressionist root that had nourished his painting continued to bear fruit even in the 1980s, when the now elderly painter painted this figure.

However, it is difficult to avoid the suggestion of also seeking a connection with the most typically Tuscan tradition of the author, especially with the Versilia side, with the expressionism of Viani and that culture of the carnival which, with its deformations and desecration, constitutes one of the most original traits of the artistic universe of Viareggio.

Catarsini has never loved perfection, preferring the originality of style, often seeking it in the grotesque and in the mask, as happens in this figure en travesti, who reclines his face looking at us with an ambiguous expression and well representing his character and the bond with his city. Already in 1926, in fact, he had created a large float dedicated to Le pesciaie at the carnival and, in 1949, he had presented an innovative project for the jury of the Carnival of Viareggio, which he will have the honor of presiding in 1978. He will also dedicate some paintings and sketches for a celebratory poster to this exhibition and to the theme of the mask.

In March 1976, “La Nazione” published an interview with him, conducted by Emilio Paoli, in which the artist declared: “Painting is a way of existing; this existence at times gives me a sense of happiness, it almost exalts me”.