AUTORITRATTI-GRAFICA - EN

Mo.C.A. atrium, the self-portrait room

First shelf on the left.

In the initial section of the exhibition, in the Mo.C.A. atrium, on the first shelf on the left wall, there is an information panel with two QR codes that provide access to audio descriptions of the exhibition and the tour. Next to it, a second panel illustrates the works displayed in pairs on the remaining seven shelves.

From the second to the eighth shelf.

Catarsini welcomes visitors with a series of 11 self-portraits. These small, vertical works, displayed on tabletop easels positioned in pairs on wooden shelves, trace the evolution of his career and his complex personality through half a century.

The self-portraits, created between the 1930s and 1980s, show Catarsini’s face from a full-face, profile, or three-quarter view. Each work, executed on paper using a variety of techniques (pencil, charcoal, pen, lithography, and monotype), captures the artist’s state of mind at that precise moment.

In addition to these works, the exhibition also includes a small oil self-portrait and two other works, all described in separate entries. One is a portrait of the painter Lorenzo Viani and the other is a 1930s drawing depicting some old sixteenth-century houses reflected in the Burlamacca Canal, in the area where both Viani and Catarsini were born, near the Matilde Tower. Other oil self-portraits are displayed in the following rooms.

Insights

In the catalog for the exhibition “The Artist in the Mirror. Alfredo Catarsini: Self-Portraits from 1930 to 1985,” held at the Academy of Drawing Arts in Florence, President Cristina Acidini emphasizes Catarsini’s thoughtful and severe personality, also expressed in his literary work, with his novel “Giorni neri,” inspired by the dramatic events of the Second World War in the Freddana Valley near Lucca. The vigorous and assertive young man of the 1930s, modeled like a polychrome statue from his sculpted hair to his torso compressed in shirts and T-shirts, transforms in the postwar period into a mature and disenchanted man, at times sadly introspective, as if touched by bitterness. Catarsini depicts himself with a receding hairline and a lined face, accepting and narrating the impending old age with the serene poise of great spirits unafraid to expose the decay of their bodies, allowing himself the only belated coquetry of a cobalt blue scarf around his neck.a self-portrait of his from 1934 has been at the Uffizi Gallery since 2005

After exiting the main hall, the exhibition continues in Rooms 1, 2, and 3.

Before exiting the main hall, there are two roll-ups positioned on either side of the entrance. One displays the Foundation’s logo, while the other, with Catarsini’s biography, contains the QR code for accessing the audio description.