50. Ritratto di un allievo, 1951, oil on canvas, 76 x 60 cm

The vertical composition has a solid spatial construction. It depicts a boy sitting three-quarters on a chair positioned at the bottom right; he rests his right arm on a shelf that is on the left of the painting and his right hand supports his brown-haired head; since the shelf is a little distant it forces him to move his torso diagonally towards the left of the painting, making the scene dynamic despite the apparent static nature of the subject. The inclination of the torso, forced by the distance of the shelf, adds an element of naturalness and spontaneity to the posture and cuts the field of vision from the bottom right to the top left. The other hand rests loosely on the knee of the crossed left leg. The relaxed attitude is typical of adolescents when they are tired or listless. The head and eyes are turned towards the observer and the expression is evening and bored.

In the background two walls at an angle meet right in the center of the painting, the one on the left is yellow/green and the other brown creating a play of contrasts that Catarsini exploits skillfully: the shelf, the arm, part of the bust and the head have a lighter background while the rest of the figure and the chair have a brown background. The way in which the lighter background envelops part of the bust and the head, while the rest is immersed in brown, contributes to giving three-dimensionality and to focusing attention on the face and expression.

The boy is dressed with care, he wears shorts, a shirt and a vest. The colors are well defined, brown predominates and above all green in various shades: the wall on the left, the lighter table legs and his dark green vest, even the shirt has light shades of green while the background, the chair, the shorts, the table top are brown.

Solid black contour lines, outlined with a brush, enclose the fields of color, defining the solid forms of the figure with still constructive brushstrokes and a bright chromatic register, played on the balance between the warm tones of the wall, the hair and the skin and the green of the vest of the anonymous protagonist.

In other paintings and in different periods he also uses black lines to define the composition, a stylistic feature that gives clarity and structure to the whole.

This painting seems to capture an intimate and revealing moment of the young student, with a studied composition that enhances his expressiveness and atmosphere.

Insights

The portrait was probably created in the new studio that the Municipality of Viareggio had assigned to Catarsini in the attics of what is now the Villa Museo Paolina Bonaparte, where the painter painted until his death. The building in which he had his old atelier, in fact, had to be demolished due to the damage suffered during the war. In this place, now the seat of his archive and custodian of his work tools, the artist took refuge to compose figures, nudes and still lifes, painting and drawing, exploring new forms and techniques of representation, such as those of Simbolismo meccanico. At the various exhibitions of these years so significant for Italian art, however, he was present with more traditional figurative works, landscapes or figure paintings, albeit marked by a strongly expressive neorealism, reserving the experiments for a more intimate and personal dimension, conducted within the walls of his studio, in that microcosm that constituted the place of choice for his research and the deepest and most secret structural essence of his art.