5 BARCHE NEL PORTO DI VIAREGGIO -EN

5. Barche nel porto di Viareggio , 1939, oil on panel, 56 x 70 cm

This horizontal painting captures a scene of the lively port of Viareggio, once again without human figures. In the foreground, a diagonal dock extends from the bottom left to the right, delimiting a body of water where four boats are moored, their bows facing forward and their hulls almost in profile, following the oblique course of the dock. A horizontal row of houses divides the canvas horizontally in half. On the left, two taller buildings stand out, while on the right, in the distance, a boat under construction shows its bow rising above the houses. The background is characterized by the profile of the hills of Massarosa and a sky tinged with blue and white. This view of the Viareggio dock also fascinates with the harmony of a painting that renders the solidity of the low volumes of the port and the transparency of the water with its luminous reflections, obtained through superimpositions and glazes in a refined and consistent chromatic range. This work highlights Catarsini’s meticulous attention to graphic and perspective study, as well as pictorial, typical of his work of this period.

Insights

Also in 1939, Catarsini participated in the Bergamo Prize with “Vele al sole”, a work that well represents his most typical production, matured in the second half of the thirties.

The research matured during the third decade, which led him from a pictorial realism towards landscape and figure compositions more structured in form and in the application of color, reflects in an original way that call to order that was characterizing much of the Italian painting of those years. Moreover, Catarsini was among those who “preferred the solidity of forms, reinforced perhaps by cubist and expressionist examples”, to the eccentricities of the avant-garde, which in this phase are translated into the emphasis on perspective planes and the dramatic accentuation of colour.