Alfredo Catarsini: biography and curiosities - 3
Alfredo Catarsini was born in Viareggio on January 17, 1899 and began drawing as a child, becoming passionate about art thanks to the many painters who could be met in Viareggio at the time and who often painted en plein air.
In 1919 he graduated from the Royal Institute of Fine Arts in Lucca where he also frequented the Caffè Caselli in via Fillungo, a meeting place for passionate discussions between artists and writers from Lucca. Subsequently, he went through an initial phase of naturalist research thanks also to his closeness to Lorenzo Viani who considered him one of the most interesting artists from Viareggio, to then approach the suggestions of the twentieth century, primitivism and the return to order, which would inspire much of the painting of that period.
In the early 1930s he met Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who invited him to exhibit at the exhibitions of the Second Futurism group.
Until the 1940s he participated in the major exhibitions held in Italy and abroad, including the Bergamo Prize, the Cremona Prize, the Ausstellung Italienischer Bilder in Hannover, the XXIII Venice Biennale and the IV Rome Quadrennial, obtaining prestigious awards and certificates, including second prize at the Cremona Prize in 1939.
There were also numerous solo exhibitions, in Rome, Milan, Lucca, Prato, Bastia, Naples, Florence, Viareggio and Forte dei Marmi.
During the war he experimented with an interesting pictorial season to which he gave the name of Riflessismo and, in 1944, evacuated with his family to San Martino in Freddana, near Lucca, he frescoed the apse of the church of the small village with a unique iconography, in which the sacred event is immersed in a landscape offended by the barbarity of war. In 1945 he also created two frescoes in the thirteenth-century Romanesque church of Castagnori.
Also stimulated by the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti, in 1948, he continued his personal research, arriving at a new creative phase that he would define as Simbologio Meccanico, in which technological images are combined with human figures and surreal forms with results of visual ambiguity and suggestion. At the same time he continued his figurative production with landscapes, portraits and still lifes characterized by a strongly expressive realism.
He took part in the Venice Biennials of 1942, 1948 and 1950, in various Roman Quadrennials, in numerous editions of the F. P. Michetti Painting Prize, in the most important Florentine and Roman exhibitions and in the most significant collective exhibitions of those years.
In 1951 he began teaching at the Istituto d’Arte Stagio Stagi in Pietrasanta and began a parallel career as a journalist and writer.
In 1969 he published Giorni Neri, a novel set during the partisan struggle in Lucca, recently republished by La Nave di Teseo.
In 1971 he won the Gold Medal at the Salon Babylon in Paris for his Mechanical Symbolism works, a selection of which was later exhibited at the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara in 1982, in an exhibition entirely dedicated to this period. In the 1980s his painting returned to the representation of his land, to the laborious docks, to the seascapes and nudes on the beach, without abandoning experiments of original pictorial research; in 1981 he held a large solo exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, with over 250 works signed by Alfredo Catarsini on display, followed by solo exhibitions at the Museo del Risorgimento in Milan, in Turin and in Paris. A cultured, sensitive and vital personality, the Artist continued to paint, draw, write and exhibit until his death on March 28, 1993.
ALFREDO CATARSINI, BAPTISM IN WINE AND THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE
For the seven Catarsini brothers, all long-lived, it was a boast to say that the credit for their good health lay in the fact that they had all been baptized immersed in a tub of wine. Their father was a wine dealer and that was a family habit.
In fact, good health has always accompanied them and Alfredo, born in 1899, still rode his bicycle with ease until he was 92. Only at 93 did he abandon his faithful bicycle that he called “Isotta Fraschini”, limiting himself to taking short trips on foot without however stopping reading, writing and drawing until March 28, 1993 when he closed his curious and attentive eyes to the world forever.
The physical prowess and resistance of his body that always remained slender were partly genetic, but were cultivated with perseverance throughout his life. Catarsini knew the human body from an anatomical and physiological point of view, interested in its complexity. He was convinced that, with its movement, the body also stimulated thought and that physical exercise was the support for artistic, literary and philosophical creation.
Even in old age, in the morning he did gymnastics with exercises invented by himself and never told to anyone; then a quick breakfast and immediately to work, because he could not go a day without having drawn or written something, making his own the saying of Pliny the Elder: nulla dies sine linea.
The first stop was to reach the atelier that was and still is two kilometers from his home. Depending on the climate he went there on foot or with his beloved bicycle; on the coldest or hottest days of the year he also worked at home. Here he worked in solitude but here he also received friends, colleagues, admirers. However, at the entrance he had placed an inscription: Whoever enters honors me, whoever does not enter does me a favor; a clear warning to discourage those who went to waste his time. Here, he gave a lot of importance to time, he used it with awareness, he dedicated it to himself and to others and, of course to his true Art, a fascinating friend, but he didn’t want to waste it.
He was often seen around the docks drawing from life, impressing colors and atmospheres in his memory that he then calmly developed on the canvases. He used to work on several works at the same time, maybe while he was painting a dock he would leave the canvas to start another with a nude, or with fantastic figures or mechanical gears. He used to say: the object is a pretext for making art and there is no problem of moving from abstraction to figurative or vice versa, for the artist it is the same, you just need to have imagination.
After lunch, which was the most important meal of the day, he continued to work or met other artists, he frequented clubs and cafes, he gave or listened to conferences, but never in the evening. At 7:30 pm his day was over and at 9:00 pm he was already in bed. In Viareggio everything changes in the summer and Alfredo Catarsini also changed his habits: very early in the morning, with his trusty bicycle, he went to the atelier, where he stayed until 10:30: after that it would be too hot to work. The next stop was the sea, at Lido di Camaiore, where he walked with water up to his knees for several kilometers, sunbathed, chatted and drew. After lunch in a hotel near the bathing establishment, he returned home for a nap and stayed there continuing his work; only rarely did he go out for things that interested him. His only vice in his youth was smoking; from a few cigarettes he then moved on to the pipe, more to keep it in his mouth, unlit, than to smoke it, because it kept him company. However, one day, while he was doing a self-portrait, it was precisely because of the pipe that he noticed that his expression was changing, that his mouth was twisting; at that point he got rid of it without regrets. In short, Catarsini’s vices were the furthest thing from the often turbulent and unruly life of artists that one can imagine.
He always tried to keep up with his rhythms, but he made an exception for the landing of man on the Moon, staying awake all night waiting for the exciting milestone of that feat and with the enthusiasm of someone born with oil lamps and who in 60 years has seen the unstoppable scientific and technological progress change lifestyles in every field.
It was undoubtedly this regulated life, this attention to body and mind, that allowed him to live past 90, even traveling alone, painting, writing, maintaining attention and mental clarity until his last hours.