4 IL MOLO DI VIAREGGIO- EN

4.  Il molo di Viareggio , 1942, oil on panel, 50 x 64.5 cm

The horizontal painting depicts a solitary winter landscape of the pier of Viareggio. On the left, the pier extends diagonally into the blue and choppy sea, flanked by two fishing shacks. In the left foreground, a seaside building with a red roof runs parallel to the pier. On the right, the beach in the foreground hosts an isolated plant near a fence. In the background, the beach meets the choppy blue sea, dominated by a sky with blue and white streaks. The work, vivid in its colors and shapes, conveys the quiet of the place interrupted only by the sound of the waves and the wind, through a chromatic balance of contrasts between warm and cold tones, with touches of ochre, blue and white that are reflected in the water and the cloudy sky.

Insights

In 1942, Catarsini participated in the XXIII Venice Biennale with “Donne nel rifugio antiaereo”, a dramatic work on the war. His exhibition activity was intense: he exhibited still lifes and landscapes in Viareggio, Pisa, Florence, presented “Cantiere” at the Premio Nazionale Versilia (Viareggio) and won the Gariboldi Prize with “Canale Burlamacca” and “Darsena”. He participated in the Camaiore exhibition with five works and re-presented the “Ritratto di giovane pittori” (the imprisoned friend Carlo Vannucci) at his personal exhibition in Prato. In 1943, his “Paese toscano” was purchased by the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome, where he exhibited a personal exhibition. Also in 1943, he exhibited “Paesaggio”, a luminous view of a Viareggio canal, at the Fourth Quadriennale d’arte nazionale in Rome.