Alfredo Catarsini 1899 ETS Foundation was founded on June 29, 2020, on the initiative of the granddaughter Elena Anna Rita Martinelli and her husband Gianvittorio Serralunga, in memory of their mother Mity Catarsini, daughter of the Artist.

It studies, protects and enhances the intellectual and artistic work of Maestro Alfredo Catarsini, in his multifaceted activity as a painter, writer, critic and animator of cultural proposals, through exhibitions, conferences and many other cultural activities, such as the Catarsini Award for the enhancement of young talents.

The Foundation is committed to the preservation of the historical archive and the Atelier Alfredo Catarsini in the Villa Museo Paolina Bonaparte in Viareggio and to promoting, with initiatives of inclusion, social integration, accessibility to places of culture and art and the enhancement of the historical-artistic, landscape and food and wine context of the places where the artist worked and which preserve the memory of his production. Inspired by the principles of the Third Sector, the Foundation specializes in the reinterpretation of the image and in descriptions adapted for audio guides aimed at everyone and in particular at people with visual disabilities. The Path The places of Catarsini, the only one in Italy that is also entirely accessible to them, is the practical demonstration of this.

ALFREDO CATARSINI IN SERAVEZZA AND THE COLLABORATION WITH GIORGIO GIANNELLI

The artistic career of Alfredo Catarsini has expanded throughout the vast territory covered by the Walk “The places of Catarsini” which has traced a series of itineraries that connect significant places in Versilia and Lucca, important in the life and work of the artist. This Walk allows you to discover a lesser-known side of Tuscany through the gaze of Catarsini’s art, connecting the places where he lived, worked and found inspiration.

Versilia is a land steeped in art and creativity. A centuries-old tradition that has attracted artists from all over the world, from Michelangelo to contemporaries. The quarries and workshops of Versilia have been and continue to be a nerve center for marble processing.

During his teaching period at the Stagio Stagi institute, Alfredo Catarsini had the opportunity to come into closer contact with the artists who frequented Pietrasanta and the upper Versilia. A significant bond was with Nerina Simi, a talented painter and daughter of Filadelfo Simi. Nerina Simi used to move her painting school to Stazzema during the summer months, creating a further opportunity for artistic interaction for Catarsini, who also maintained relationships with some of Nerina’s students.

Those years were a fertile period for Alfredo Catarsini, not only from a professional point of view with the satisfactions deriving from teaching and artistic contacts, but also on a personal level, with a greater dedication to writing. In those years, in fact, he committed himself to writing novels and short stories, but also articles for important newspapers such as “La Nazione” and “Il Tirreno”, expanding his intellectual activity beyond painting.

A significant event of this period was the beginning of his long collaboration, lasting twenty years, with the periodical “Versilia Oggi”. This monthly information magazine, founded on November 3, 1966 by a group of Versilian figures from the municipalities of Pietrasanta, Seravezza, Forte dei Marmi and Stazzema, became an important space for Catarsini’s reflections and writings, testifying to his deep connection with the territory and his lively participation in local cultural life.

The prerogative of “Versilia Oggi” was precisely the rediscovery and valorization of the common roots of Versilia, a territory united by the river of the same name, by a peculiar language and by shared local traditions. Among the founders of this important voice of the territory stood out the professional journalist Giorgio Giannelli.

A distinctive feature of the articles published in the magazine was their exclusive focus on topics concerning Versilia, in all its facets. In this context, Alfredo Catarsini’s contributions stood out for always being accompanied by his drawings and lively caricatures, adding an artistic and often ironic touch to his analysis and story of the territory and its people.

Many important names among the contributors to this magazine and this is how Giorgio Giannelli remembered him in the last interview of the summer of 2024 “Alfredo Catarsini was a punctual and precise author in addition to his sagacity in drawing his famous caricatures of faces of Versilia and despite the fact that he was from Viareggio, we felt he was one of us and a great friendship between us”

Alfredo Catarsini often went to meet Giannelli in his home in Querceta and he remembered the lively discussions and comparisons that took place between them and with other authors of the magazine. The collection of original drawings of the illustrations, jealously preserved by Giorgio Giannelli, was donated to the Catarsini Foundation by his children after his death on January 27, 2025. This donation represents a precious enrichment for the Foundation’s heritage and a further testimony to the deep bond between the two men. Some caricatures of characters from Quarto Platano and one of himself are exhibited in Forte dei Marmi in the stage of the Cammino at Villa Bertelli.

CATARSINI AND THE EXHIBITIONS IN SERAVEZZA

The first documented exhibition in Seravezza dates back to the 1930s.

The paintings that Catarsini created in the mid-1930s are impressive for the solidity of the brushstrokes that structure the volumes, vigorously outlined and confident in the modeling. In the numerous exhibitions in which he took part in the second half of the 1930s, views of the Viareggio shipyards appear more frequently, in which the landscape is characterized as the natural setting for workers’ work and the shipyards became the place where man built and created monumental wooden machines capable of dominating the sea.

1936 in particular was a year rich in exhibitions and recognition: Catarsini exhibited nine works, admired by Primo Conti, at the Kursaal Viareggio, where he achieved success with Velieri in cantiere, purchased by the Ministry of Popular Culture for the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome.

Again in 1936, between August and October, he presented four paintings at the Third Art Exhibition in Seravezza and two frescoed landscapes at the IX Tuscan Art Exhibition in Florence, which also declared, in the technical choice, his adherence to the new lines of painting of the time, confirmed also in the field of wall painting of figures with a religious background, as in the large mural Le nozze di Maria, painted on the facade of the church of San Giuseppe in Viareggio.

From the testimony of the painter Giampaolo Giovannetti, his student at the Stagio Stagi, we traced his presence in Giustagnana in April 1971 at the Mostra Rassegna di pittura e Scultura where he exhibited the work Cave di Marmo currently exhibited in the Seravezzo stage of the Cammino nel Palazzo Mediceo. In the exhibition organized by the critics Paloscia, Carlesi, Polacci and Bertoli, works by Viani, Catarsini, Miozzo, Lorenzoni and Giovannetti were exhibited.

More recently in 2009 the large painting Il grano della bonifica lucchese which participated in the 1940 Cremona Prize, was exhibited in the large summer exhibition Cultura della terra in Toscana. The work was then lost track of until its rediscovery in January 2022 in Grosseto. For a year and a half it was exhibited at Palazzo Ducale, which was then the Lucca stop on the Camino, and then from 27 December 2023 it is in the Museo del Quarto Platano in Villa Bertelli in Forte dei Marmi, the next stop on the Camino.