Biography

1899-1918
Born in Viareggio on 17 January 1899 to Verano, a wine merchant, and Elvira Canova, who came from a family of Genoese sea captains and shipowners. The family lived in the house that had belonged to the musician Ippolito Ragghianti, in one of the old quarters of the town, right “in the shadow of the Torre Matilde”. Elvira and Verano, known as Pietro, had nine children, seven boys and two girls; the girls died soon after birth, and Elvira too died young.
His mother’s brothers then looked after the orphans together with their father. Seafaring men, as tradition had it they took Alfredo aboard at the age of nine on a sailing ship under their command, on the Cagliari–Civitavecchia run; but for young Alfredo the experience was wretched, and his uncles chose to leave him to his own hopes, which even then were art and drawing. From the painter’s own recollections, his first drawing seems to have been made at eight years old, a portrait of a little friend of his.
So he enrolled at the Royal Institute of Fine Arts in Lucca, and in 1914 went to Paris with his mother’s brothers; there, in a café in Montmartre, he met Amedeo Modigliani.
When Modigliani learned they came from Viareggio he exclaimed “Then we are almost from the same town!”, and hearing of the boy’s interest in art he handed him his sketchbook to see how he drew.

1918
In August he met Marinetti in the halls of the Kursaal in Viareggio.
He was called up (he was one of the “boys of ’99”), but fortunately was not sent to the trenches at the front. He came back from that short experience a man.

1919
He took his diploma at the Royal Institute of Art in Lucca. He saw much of Lorenzo Viani, who counted him among the hopes of Viareggio’s art. One saying of Viani’s stayed with Catarsini all his life: “…one does not become an artist by going into academies; art must be lived through and through”. Catarsini would live his whole long life for art alone, which was always for him a matter of the spirit and a refuge from every trouble. Viani remained for him a master and a point of reference. In September he was called up for naval service, on the tenth radio-telegraphy course, and posted to La Spezia.

1920
On 12 June he received his unlimited discharge papers with a note of good conduct and of loyalty and honour in service. In Viareggio he frequented the studio of the painter Domenico Ghiselli, who in 1912 had decorated the Kursaal, and from him learned the techniques of fresco and decoration.

1923
In the church of Sant’Antonio he married the young Giuseppina Rossi, born in 1902, daughter of a master mariner. Out of love the painter changed her name, and from then on they were Alfredo and Alfreda Catarsini, in a happy marriage of equals. Alfreda, a fine seamstress, opened a well-known fashion atelier in Viareggio and went on working after the birth of their two children.
Catarsini could therefore carry on his search in painting, which throughout his long career (apart from certain periods in which he experimented and created new and compelling pictorial languages) centred on observing the world he lived in: the beaches, the seascapes, the corners of the docks, the old poor houses and the people of the truest, most ordinary Viareggio. Catarsini was never a society painter; the fashionable world that came to Viareggio in summer held no interest for him. His was, and always would be, an inward painting, founded on close observation of human nature and of the Versilian landscape, whose beauty and fine melancholy he felt entirely.

1924
He opened his first studio in via Puccini, near the Sacro Cuore Institute, in a building that had been a tile factory. He shared it with the very young Danilo Di Prete, who would later leave Italy for Brazil, where he made an interesting career as a painter and poster artist. For chronic lack of money, the studio seems to have been furnished with papier-mâché. His daughter Mity was born.

1926-1928
For the 1926 Carnival he built the float “Le pesciaie al Carnevale”.
In 1927 he took part in the National Exhibition of Landscape Art in Bologna. The following year he was in Florence for the First Regional Exhibition of Tuscan Art, in the cloisters of Santa Maria Novella. In these years and up to the mid-1930s he decorated the façades and interiors of houses and villas between Viareggio and Forte dei Marmi.

1929
In the spring he took part in the First Provincial Art Exhibition at the Palazzo del Governo in Lucca, and at the end of July held his first solo show in Viareggio, in the rooms of Palazzo Paolina; works by the sculptor Ruffo Giuntini were shown in the same building. His son Orazio was born. After a first naturalist period, never disowned and marked by a realist strain taken from Viani, he moved towards Primitivism and the Return to Order that would shape much Italian painting of the 1930s.

1930 – 1932
He met Leonida Repaci, with whom he formed a lasting friendship.
In these years he began to frequent Il Quarto Platano in Forte dei Marmi. In the spring he took part in the IV Regional Exhibition of Tuscan Art in Florence. In 1932, from 6 August to 10 September, he showed fifty-two works in Forte dei Marmi, in Viale Mazzini opposite the Teatro Aurora.
In the preface to the small catalogue Catarsini wrote: “I have always loved art, not out of vain ambition, but from a supreme need of the inner life. From early childhood my love of painting drove me to run after certain foreigners who in those days perched with their easels along the banks of the canal, the docks, the pine woods. They painted with techniques I did not understand; but that did not matter to me — only the colour gripped me, setting my soul trembling with endless longings…”. From the same year comes the intense portrait of his wife and his young daughter. In the summer he made some decorations for the Kursaal in Viareggio.

1933
In August he showed more than forty paintings in Viareggio, in the Sala Tirreno of the Albergo Tirreno on viale Marconi in the Marco Polo district. The subjects are chiefly landscapes of the docks and of the countryside around Viareggio.
F. T. Marinetti organised the “Golfo della Spezia” National Painting Prize at the Casa d’Arte in La Spezia and invited him to take part with the painting Manovre di sbarco – Il Porto.
On the jury, alongside Marinetti, were Felice Casorati, Fillia and Enrico Prampolini.
On Marinetti’s own advice he joined the Second Futurism group. In December he took part in Lucca in the Third Trade Union Exhibition of the Lucca area, held at the Palazzo del Littorio by the National Fascist Fine Arts Union, showing four works: Il Porto, San Terenzo, Veliero in porto and Impressione.

1934
In June he took part, with the works Vecchia Darsena, Veliero sullo scalo, Barche di pescatori, Pescatori and Impressione, in the Mostra Marinara held in the rooms of the Italian Naval League on the Molo di Ponente in Viareggio; Viani, Sargentini, Di Prete and Santini showed there too.
He was present at the First Viareggio Summer Exhibition in the Kursaal, where the paintings Ritratto della figlia Mity and Il limonaio were much admired. In August he took part in the First Marina di Pietrasanta Summer Exhibition with two paintings, Darsena and Barche. Again at the Naval League in Viareggio, between August and September, he held a solo show of forty-nine works, among them an Aeropainting.

1935
He took part with as many as 15 works in the Exhibition of Painting, Sculpture and Black and White at the Kursaal in Viareggio: among the works shown were Amiche, Autoritratto and several sea subjects, including a Darsena sold to Mr Hassis, a collector from New York. In September he took part in the Second Versilian Art Exhibition at the Palazzo del Littorio in Pietrasanta (today the town hall), showing three works, one of them a fresco (Cantiere, Figura, Impressione). Lorenzo Viani was at the same exhibition with ten works, among them Festa di San Biagio. In October he was at the VIII Tuscan Art Exhibition, held in Florence by the Interprovincial Fascist Fine Arts Union, with two works, Cantiere and Autoritratto.

1936
In February he took part in the I Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture Sketches at the Villa Comunale in Sanremo.
He was present with nine works at the Exhibition of Tuscan Artists and of the Complete Works of Viani, held by the Lucca Artists’ Union at the Kursaal in Viareggio; his works were admired by Primo Conti, and the painting Cantiere navale was bought for the Gallery of Modern Art in Rome. In the summer he held a solo show at the Hall du Studio X gallery in Bastia, Corsica; there he was overtaken by the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, which obliged him to stay in Corsica for a short time before he could return to Italy. During his Corsican stay he painted landscapes and portraits, among them one of Miss Corsica.
In August four of his works were shown at the Third Art Exhibition at the Casa del Fascio in Seravezza; in October he took part with two frescoes, Baree and Paese, in the IX Tuscan Art Exhibition held in Florence by the Interprovincial Fascist Fine Arts Union.
He frescoed the façade of the little church of San Giuseppe (the Oratory of San Giuseppe) in via della Stella (today via Matteotti) in Viareggio with Le nozze di Maria, today sadly almost illegible. The second figure on the right, seen in profile watching the scene, is a self-portrait.

1937
In March he was in Bastia again, where he held a solo show of twenty-two works, many of them landscapes of Viareggio and some views of Bastia, to flattering success. In May he was at the IV Trade Union Art Exhibition in Lucca, held by the Fascist Confederation of Professionals and Artists, Provincial Union of Lucca, with four works. He took part with three works — Ragazza corsa, Nudo or La bagnante, and Pioggia a Bastia — in the IV Viareggio Summer Exhibition at the Kursaal, held by the Lucca section of the Interprovincial Fascist Fine Arts Union; the jury was made up of Arturo Dazzi, Mario Carlesi, Carlo Carrà and Moses Levy, the last two also showing several works, in both the Black and White and the Painting sections.
Between September and October he was admitted with the works Cantiere and Scaricatore di porto to the Second Exhibition of the National Fascist Fine Arts Union, held in the Palazzina Spagnola in Naples, where Ruggero Sargentini and Danilo Di Prete also showed.

1938
In May he was in Florence, at the Uffizi, for the X Interprovincial Exhibition of the Tuscan Union, where he showed the paintings Cantiere and Scaricatori di porto.
With Ruggero Sargentini and Mario Carlesi he sat on the organising committee of the V Viareggio Summer Exhibition. There Catarsini showed four works, among them the much-admired Autoritratto and Cantiere, which on 24 July, the very day of the opening, was bought by the Minister of Popular Culture S.A. Alfieri. Piero Guarducci wrote in «Foglio d’Ordini»: “…But perhaps the most telling, or the one who among the Viareggini shows the best of himself, is Alfredo Catarsini with four compositions, of which the one that seems to us to gather or sum up all his painting is this «Autoritratto», truly happy in its inspiration and in the pitch of its colours, without a shadow of mannerism and above all of affected sincerity.”
At the end of July he was at the opening of the new Select bathing establishment (now the Principe di Piemonte) with his children Mity and Orazio.

1939
He took part in the Cremona Prize with the large painting Discorso del Duce ascoltato alla radio da paesani di un villaggio – 2 Ottobre XIII (later often described as I rurali ascoltano), with which he won the joint second prize of 12,000 lire. Giulio Carlo Argan, at the time Royal Superintendent of Fine Arts, sat on the jury. Works entered the competition under a motto rather than the artist’s name, which was made public only after the prizes were awarded. For his painting Catarsini chose “Chi si ferma è perduto”. With his son Orazio he went to collect the prize at the Palazzo dell’Arte in Cremona; the painting was later shown for a long period in Viareggio, in the Casa del Fascio in Piazza Principe Amedeo, now Piazza Mazzini. Aldo Ordavo described the painting thus: “…The figures are listening, waiting, living, breathing; and all this life comes from the whole of the masses, the postures, the faces, the hands, the feet. One feels in that air something that holds and keeps us, that there is celebration, expectation, joy, thought, meditation, strength of spirit, thoughts of the future, hopes. Everything listens, waits and lives…”
With the Cremona prize money he bought a small house in the Marco Polo district and a bathing establishment at Fiumetto, which he left in the hands of his youngest brother, Renato. In September he was in San Miniato for the First Art Exhibition of the City of San Miniato, where he showed three works, one a self-portrait. In October he was at the Palazzo della Ragione in Bergamo for the Bergamo Prize — National Exhibition of the Italian Landscape — with the painting Vele al sole. In Florence he took part in the XI Interprovincial Art Exhibition.

1940
On 20 January he opened a solo show at the Casa d’Artisti in via Manzoni, Milan, where he also showed the large painting he had entered for the previous year’s Cremona Prize; the Gallery of Modern Art in Milan bought the painting Il Porto di Viareggio. In the catalogue preface Renata Ordavo wrote: “…The broad breath of his colours, which speak the travail of ideas, distinct and inseparable at once in a superb fusion of visual orchestration, opens to him the way to every destiny…”.
He took part in the II Cremona Prize with the large canvas Il grano della Bonifica Lucchese; for this edition Catarsini chose the motto “Questa è la guerra che noi vogliamo”. In September a selection of the most important paintings from the II Cremona Prize was shown at the Kunstlerhaus in Hannover, Germany, as part of the Italian-German cultural exchanges promoted by Minister of State Roberto Farinacci. The exhibition was a great success; alongside Catarsini’s large painting was shown Danilo di Prete’s La battaglia del grano, whose composition echoes the solemnity of Catarsini’s figures, evidence of their artistic bond and friendship.
Giulia Viani, Lorenzo’s widow, in a letter of 10 August to Renato Santini, thanked him and Catarsini for their presence at the mournful ceremony held in Viani’s memory and for the article Catarsini had written: “…Particular and warmest thanks to Sig. Catarsini for the beautiful article in which the merits and the exquisite gifts of my Lorenzo as an artist shone out”.
In this period Catarsini had his studio in the town hall building in Via Regia, facing Piazza Manzoni. From the windows he could see the Burlamacca canal and the boats going in and out, and before his eyes he always had some of his favourite subjects: old Viareggio with its boats, its sails, its singular characters, and the colours and the light.

1941
He took part in Cremona in the Retrospective Exhibition of the paintings that had won the Cremona Prize, organised by Farinacci in the Sala delle Colonne of Palazzo Affaetati. Again in Cremona he was at the III Cremona Prize with the large triptych G.I.L. (Gioventù Italiana del Littorio), for which he chose the motto “Romano”. In April he took part in the III Exhibition of the National Fascist Fine Arts Union (III Intersindacale), held in Milan at the Palazzo dell’Arte, with the painting Barche di renaioli. With as many as 1,400 works in 40 rooms, the exhibition had great national resonance and an exceptional public success.
In May he was admitted to the XII Tuscan Art Exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, held by the Interprovincial Fascist Fine Arts Union, with two paintings, Vecchia Torre and Ritratto.
In August he took part in Viareggio in the VII Summer Exhibition of Painting Reserved to Landscape with two paintings, Campagna viareggina and Mattino-Case di campagna, the latter bought by the Minister of the Interior.
In September a selection of works from the III Cremona Prize was shown in Hannover, as in the previous year; Catarsini, present with the triptych G.I.L., was particularly appreciated and received a prize. In December he held a new solo show at the «P. Grande» gallery in via Dante, Milan, where he showed thirty-seven works, chiefly landscapes, and some portraits. “Il Popolo d’Italia” wrote: “…the landscape often becomes soft and, we would say, almost fleshy in tints warmed by pictorial emotion, by a technical and sensual taste that makes these country views, these seascapes, alive and satisfying…”.

1942
From 1 to 15 March he held a solo show in the small hall of the Albergo Universo in Lucca, with thirty-six works — landscapes, portraits and the triptych G.I.L. shown at the III Cremona Prize.
Also in March he showed with Luigi Mocellini at the Bottega dei Vàgeri, on the Passeggiata in Viareggio. In April he took part with two works in the XIII Tuscan Art Exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence.
In May he returned to the Bottega dei Vàgeri with six works: La battaglia del grano, Inferma, Padule, Cava di sabbia and two still lifes, for the I Exhibition of works by a group of Viareggio artists. That same month Catarsini gave one of his works to the art exhibition in aid of the armed forces, held at the open-air Teatro “G. Puccini” by the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro together with the National Fine Arts Union.
Still in Viareggio, in the summer, he took part in the Versilia Prize, I National “Versilia” Prize for landscape painting — Gariboldi Prizes. For the Versilia Prize he showed Cantiere, while for the Gariboldi Prize he entered Canale Burlamacca and Darsena viareggina, winning first prize for both. At Lido di Camaiore he showed five works at the First Exhibition of Art and History of Camaiore and Versilia, in which Galileo Chini, Thayat, Renato Santini, Ruggero Sargentini and Giuseppe Murri also took part.
He took part in the XXIII Venice International Art Biennale with the painting Donne nel ricovero (or Donne nel rifugio antiaereo). At the opening he was photographed with Plinio Nomellini and a group of Tuscan painters.
In October a solo show of thirty-two paintings opened in Prato at the Dopolavoro Littorio: among them Ritratto d’un giovane pittore, of 1937, showing his dear friend Carlo Vannucci, known as Bocco — a painting that, with twenty-nine other works, is part of the gift made by the family to the Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art «Lorenzo Viani» in Viareggio.

1942-45
In these years he devoted himself to a particular series of paintings born of observing the reflections of the outside world in the glass over pictures: a painting made up of the picture and of what surrounded it reflected in the glass. Catarsini called this short and compelling season Riflessismo. Both Riflessismo and the longer period of Mechanical Symbolism that followed have strong ties to Surrealism; they are creative phases in which, in a kind of “other” reality, he gives form to the anxieties and unease of twentieth-century man.

1943
On 29 January a solo show opened in Rome at the Dopolavoro dei Bancari, with the Minister of National Education Giuseppe Bottai present. Among the 35 works, besides several Viareggio subjects, he showed the large triptych G.I.L. already presented at the 1941 Cremona Prize; the painting Paese Toscano was bought by the Gallery of Modern Art in Rome.
Krimer, in his long preface to the catalogue, noted the force with which Catarsini caught the air of the Viareggio landscape: “…The Versilian landscape is generally very sweet — warm, soft, delicate tones; blue of sky and sea, silver green of the olives, dark greens of the pines, bright greens of the meadows, the light and shade of the Apuan Alps, the gold of the beaches… One risks falling into banal painting, rhetorical, too clean and too sweet; Catarsini’s painting, instead, is strong. Of Viareggio he has caught the atmosphere — not, of course, that of the many-coloured, temporary summer Viareggio, but of the seafaring Viareggio, the Viareggio that really exists…”
On 11 July he received a letter from his friend the painter Carlo Vannucci, known as Bocco, a prisoner of war in Bombay. Vannucci asked for news of the Cremona Prize and of the Viareggio summer exhibition, and asked him to greet Danilo di Prete.
He took part in the IV National Quadrennial of Art in Rome with the painting Paesaggio.

1944
He moved with his family to San Martino in Freddana, where the villagers asked him to beautify the parish church in exchange for a little money and necessities: flour, oil, wine. For the semi-dome of the apse, rebuilt in an eclectic style in 1904 around the surviving Romanesque bell tower, Catarsini painted a large fresco with an iconography all its own. Amid an explicit depiction of war — tanks, bombers, houses destroyed by bombing, grieving figures of evacuees with their few belongings — the Madonna comes down from the sky, beautiful and hieratic, to console men and give them hope with her serene gaze, welcomed by Saint Martin and Saint Paulinus. The villagers acted as models, and the painter portrayed himself in the figure of Saint Paulinus. In the two scenes at the sides of the high altar are La cena in Emmaus and the Incontro di Gesù con la Samaritana al pozzo.

1945
In the church of San Tommaso at Castagnori, a small village in the Val Freddana, he painted at the sides of the high altar La Moltiplicazione dei pani and Gesù e i pescatori sul lago di Tiberiade, frescoes that, after many years of neglect, were at last restored in 2007, when the church was reopened for worship. The frescoes are signed “A. Catarsini da Viareggio dipinse A.D. 1945”, confirming his deep sense of belonging to the town of his birth.
That same year he was present with two Darsene and an Autoritratto at the first post-war Viareggio Summer Exhibition. In August he received another letter from his friend Carlo Vannucci (this time from the prison camp at Cowra in Australia, where he had been moved) congratulating him on the painting Donne nel rifugio, of which Catarsini had managed to send him a photograph: “this work of yours is the best you have done. There is an atmosphere in it that one can see you have lived…”, and on having crossed the threshold of the Venice Biennale, which “means being at the top of the longed-for peak”. In October he took part in the Provincial Art Exhibition held by the Society of Fine Arts of Lucca with three works, Fiori secchi, Padule and Natura Morta-Fichi.

1946
In August he took part in Forte dei Marmi in the Versilian Art Exhibition with five works, two of them still lifes; Renato Santini, Danilo di Prete, Ruggero Sargentini and Ugo Guidi were among those present. In December he showed at the «Saloncino Baldi» in Prato.
The old town hall in Via Regia, where the artist had his studio, had to be pulled down because the war had left it unsafe, and the council gave him a new studio in the attics of Palazzo Paolina. The studio, reached by a steep and almost secret stair, was wide and cold, but in time filled with a little furniture and many pictures and drawings, palettes and brushes heaped everywhere, and shelves full of books. In these muffled, silent rooms Catarsini would paint until the end of his long life.
In September he took part in the I National Painting Competition “Premio Prato”, at the Collegio Cicognini in Prato. In November he took part with a self-portrait in the Consolazio-Gemito-Irolli-Pratella Collection exhibition and the II Tuscan Autumn show of portraits and self-portraits by twentieth-century artists, at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. He worked for the Pisa heritage authority on the restoration of an eighteenth-century ceiling in the Ducal Palace of Massa.

1947
In August a solo show was held at the Casinò Circolo dei Reduci in Viareggio, chiefly with works from 1946 to 1947; Leonida Repaci bought a still life.
He took part in the Viareggio Art Exhibition, Manfredo and Ciro Bertini Prize, held by the Viareggio section of the Italian Communist Party, showing two Darsene and an Autoritratto.
In December he took part in the Lucca Prize — Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture at the Bruno Vangelisti art gallery — with the works Baracche sulla spiaggia and Natura morta, and was commended by the jury chaired by Carlo Hautmann and including, among others, Arturo Dazzi, Gianni Vagnetti and Guido Peyron.
From this year he was invited to the Francesco Paolo Michetti National Painting Prize at Francavilla al Mare in Abruzzo. He restored the decoration of the apse of the Chiesa di Frati in Pietrasanta, better known as the church of San Francesco.

1948
In February he showed in Rome in a group exhibition of Tuscan painters at the «Galleria Po», with Renato Santini and Vittorio Morelli: Catarsini showed ten paintings of Viareggio subjects.
He took part in the National Exhibition of Figurative Art promoted by the body running the Quadrennial Art Exhibition (V Quadrennial) in Rome with the work Ragazza di casa. The exhibition, opened on 14 March at the Gallery of Modern Art at Valle Giulia, was received as the most important national event since the Liberation. That same year he was at the XXIV Venice Biennale with the oil painting Paese of 1946. He drew close to the newly formed Fronte Nuovo delle Arti — Turcato, Birolli, Vedova, Santomaso, Corpora, Guttuso, Leoncillo and Afro — who at that very Biennale presented the Manifesto of Neocubism, bringing a lyrical narrative and a new ordering of the image into the post-Cubist line. From this attention to new forms, mixed with Léger’s machine imagery and Breton’s surrealist aesthetic, Catarsini drew “Mechanical Symbolism”, which he would develop above all between the 1950s and the 1970s. The works of this period often join technological images to surreal ones, with enigmatic results of great visual ambiguity. Catarsini took up all the languages of the avant-garde, without following a chronological or otherwise progressive path, choosing each time what his state of mind and the urgency of form suggested.
In July he took part in the National Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, Gran Premio «Forte dei Marmi», and in August was at the F. P. Michetti National Painting Prize at Francavilla al Mare with three paintings: Nudo, Canale a Viareggio and Sede dei Canottieri a Viareggio.
He took part in the Poggibonsi Prize, showing Cantiere Navale, Vecchia Viareggio and Gasometro, and in the Lucca Prize, in the halls of the Teatro del Giglio, where he showed two works: Cocomeraio and Modelle. Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti was among the jurors.
The Confraternity of the Annunziata in Viareggio commissioned the painter to make a new Annunciation for the high altar of the small church near the Torre Matilde, in the part of old Viareggio where the painter had been born. The large canvas was to follow the earlier one (perhaps of the seventeenth-century Bolognese school, by others given to the hand of Sister Eufrosina Burlamacchi, a known miniaturist of the same period), much loved by the people of Viareggio, bought in 1818 and destroyed in the bombing of the Second World War. Catarsini took the commission with enthusiasm, and on the day the new painting was presented and blessed in the church a great crowd gathered, moved, around the painter. At the foot of the painting Catarsini put his signature and an inscription in Latin: Antiquam Huius Delubri Tabulam Bello Deletam Catarsinius Pictor Refecit Anno D. MCMXLVIII. The painting is still in place and venerated by the people.

1949
He campaigned for the monument to Viani, which the sculptor Arturo Martini had given to the town, to be shown in the open, as the sculptor had wished and as his widow Giulia Viani wanted; in a letter of 20 March she wrote to him: “I thank you warmly for your concern for Arturo Martini’s beautiful monument, which was truly given by that illustrious artist to be placed in a square in Viareggio in the light of the sun, and not to be condemned to live in the shade for ever. This was truly the illustrious artist’s wish, as I too can testify, so that the image of Lorenzo Viani may live through the centuries.” From this date until 1959 he kept up a close correspondence with Giulia Viani.
He wrote to the president of the Carnival Committee, Carlo Alberto Sargentini, brother of the painter Ruggero, proposing a new way of composing the jury that awarded the prizes. He met the very young Raffaello Bertoli, poet and journalist, who would be his friend and admirer all his life. Together they frequented “La Bottega dei Vàgeri”, founded in 1942 by Cristoforo Mercati (Krimer) and the poet Elpidio Jenco, and the Centro Versiliese delle Arti, which Krimer himself had founded after the war to promote the arts in Versilia, where many artists and intellectuals of the day met: Fortunato Bellonzi (secretary of the Rome Quadrennial), Giovanni March, Mino Maccari, Arturo Dazzi, Renato Santini, Franca Taylor, Fausto Maria Liberatore, Alfredo and Norge Simonetti.
He took part with four drawings and a fresco sketch in the First Exhibition of Sacred Art, in the church of San Cristoforo in Lucca.

1950
In the January issue of the magazine Ausonia Lettere e Arti nel Mondo he published a note on the Viani retrospective planned for the XXV Venice Biennale.
He began corresponding with Garibaldo Alessandrini, poet and sculptor of Ripa di Querceta. He was present at the «Golfo della Spezia» National Painting Exhibition.
In March, at the Galleria La Ruota in Lucca, he showed twenty-one paintings, mostly views of Viareggio; Michele Biancale wrote in the small leaflet: “Catarsini is placid, absorbed, idyllic, of fine luminous colour, shrewd but simple in composition. From his canvases comes a Viareggio less mystical and less dramatic, less pathetic and apocalyptic than Viani’s, but calmer, serene, welcoming.”
At the Third Interprovincial Tyrrhenian Exhibition, held in the Botanical Garden of Lucca, the jury of Felice Casorati, Raffaele De Grada and Publio Morbiducci commended his painting Sede di canottieri. He took part with the painting Le sartine, of about 1943, in the first edition of the Città di Gallarate National Painting Prize, set up to form the town’s Civic Gallery of Modern Art.
He took part in the XXV Venice Biennale with the painting Il Cantiere. On that occasion Carlo Carrà remarked: “I would necessarily pay close attention to this young man, no longer so very young, because his painting will surely have something to say one day before long”.
In the summer he showed the painting Giardini alla Biennale at the IV F. P. Michetti National Painting Prize at Francavilla al Mare; at the same event he also entered the competition for a sacred painting with Il Battesimo di Cristo.

1951
He began teaching decoration and mosaic design at the Stagio Stagi art institute in Pietrasanta, where he later held the chair of drawing from life, which he kept until

1969
In these years he also worked for the Venetian mosaicist Favret, who had his studio in Pietrasanta, and for the Ciocchetti firm, also in Pietrasanta.
With the painting Darsena viareggina he won joint first prize at the Bagni di Lucca Painting Prize. The Galleria Fratini in Viareggio gave him a monographic show of sea subjects.
Issue no. 9 of Esperia, Rivista di Cultura e Turismo delle Regioni Italiane, carried an article about him by Garibaldo Alessandrini, illustrated with two of his drawings.
He was admitted with the work Monache al mare to the First International Biennale of Maritime Art, held for the Columbus celebrations at the Palazzo dell’Accademia in Piazza de Ferraris, Genoa. The jury was made up of international artists and critics including Graham Sutherland, Fernand Léger, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Giulio Carlo Argan, Renato Guttuso and Carlo Carrà.
In December he showed six works (among them Darsena, which had won first prize at the Bagni di Lucca Prize) in a group exhibition of Viareggio painters at the Galleria Fratini in Viareggio.
He took part in the VI National Quadrennial of Art in Rome, where he showed an Autoritratto of 1948. The exhibition presented more than a thousand artists, living and dead, and drew very large crowds.
From December he began writing for Scena Illustrata, at the invitation of its editor Rodolfo M. Foti and on the recommendation of Giulia Viani, with whom Catarsini had a relationship of esteem and friendship.

1952
On 8 April, with the other artists who had taken part in the VI National Quadrennial of Art in Rome, he was received in audience by His Holiness Pius XII.
In May he took part with two drawings and the painting Cocomeraio of 1948 in the exhibition Mezzo Secolo d’Arte Toscana 1901-1950 at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, and in June he was at the first Exhibition of Contemporary Italian Drawing, held by the old Compagnia del Paiolo in the Uffizi loggias. In the spring he gave several lectures on art at the “Giacomo Puccini” student cultural circle in Torre del Lago.
In the summer he showed the painting Il Cantiere at the First “Lorenzo Viani” National Prize for painting and sculpture, held at Lido di Camaiore.
On 10 August Giulia Viani sent Catarsini a letter of thanks in which she wrote: “…I have read the beautiful article, which holds so many deep truths. You have understood profoundly the complex personality of our ‘Lorenzo’ as a man and as an artist, and you make plain the social setting that helped prepare ‘that sensibility needed to make him a magnificent interpreter of human sorrow’…”
He took part in the National Art Exhibition of Trieste with the painting Figura. At the end of the year he held a solo show at the Caffè Bacchino in Prato, showing several Viareggio docks and a series of monotypes.

1953
In June he took part in the Group Exhibition of Viareggio and Versilian Artists at the Bottega dei Vàgeri, in the Principe di Piemonte building, the former Casino.
On 10 March the French magazine La Revue Moderne Illustrée asked him for information about his artistic career, for a study devoted to him. In December he took part in the VI Art Exhibition in Pontedera with three works: Barche in riparazione, Darsena Vecchia and Natura morta.

1954
In March he held a solo show of thirty-six works, many of them monotypes, at the Centro Versiliese delle Arti — La Zattera dei Vàgeri in via Don Bosco, Viareggio. In his short introduction to the show Catarsini wrote: “…Among the monochrome greyness of these ‘monotypes’ there is set the patch of colour of my paintings; small things, some of them only quick impressions, belonging to different periods, from which one can grasp the anxiety that afflicts every artist in the search for a new syntax, for a more forceful, more communicative language…”.
In May he took part in Rome in the International Exhibition of the «Quo Vadis» arts centre with the painting Darsena.
In June he was in Florence for the Second Exhibition of Contemporary Italian Drawing, held in the Uffizi loggias by the old Compagnia del Paiolo. In September he took part in the open-air painting exhibition “Visioni di Lucca”, held by the Centro Versiliese delle Arti under the auspices of the provincial tourist board, and received the plaque of the provincial administration.
In October an exhibition of the Vàgeri group opened in Livorno, organised by the Centro Versiliese delle Arti with a retrospective of works by Lorenzo Viani; Catarsini was present with two works: Zona industriale and Vecchia Darsena.
He took part in the National Painting Exhibition at Frattamaggiore, near Naples, held in the so-called “town of hemp”, and won joint first prize of 200,000 lire with the painting Pettinatura della Canapa, later placed in the town’s new civic gallery. More than 200 artists took part; the judging committee was chaired by Arturo Dazzi.
In November, by decree of the President of the Republic dated 2 June 1954 and with the favourable opinion of the Prefect of Lucca, Dr Zacchi, Catarsini was made a Knight of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.

1955
In April he took part in the National Portrait Exhibition held in Florence at the Casa di Dante, where he showed the painting Ragazza di Casa.
At the III Open-Air Painting Prize at the Rotonda dell’Ardenza in Livorno he won the Giovanni Bartolena Prize, and at the Tirrenia open-air event “Colori di Tirrenia” he won joint second prize with the painting Marina con cabine.
He received the congratulations of the Prefect of Lucca on being made a Knight of the Order of Merit. At the National Exhibition of Contemporary Art in San Benedetto del Tronto he was given a medal and a diploma for the high quality of his art. He was at the I Amedeo Modigliani Prize, City of Livorno, where he showed the painting Cantiere. He took part in the VII National Quadrennial of Art in Rome with the work Monache sulla spiaggia. In October he returned to Frattamaggiore for the «Città di Frattamaggiore» National Painting Exhibition.
On 26 November a solo show of twenty-four paintings opened at the Casa di Dante in Florence, and in December he showed at Palazzo Moroni in Pietrasanta, seat of the Circolo Artisti Versiliesi, where during the year he had given well-received lectures on art.

1956
On the initiative of the Centro Versiliese delle Arti and the Mayor of Viareggio, Dr Catelli, a case containing six paintings with views of the town was sent to Prince Rainier as a wedding gift for his marriage to Grace Kelly. The gift pleased the Prince greatly, and he warmly thanked the Centro Versiliese delle Arti and the six artists: Catarsini, Gaddi, Francesconi, Mazzanti, Paszun and Pieraccini.
He took part in the group show of Viareggio painters at the Bottega dei Vàgeri, together with, among others, Danilo di Prete, Renato Santini, Evelina Gaddi, Mario Cosci and Antonio Francesconi; the exhibition was opened by Mayor Catelli.
He proposed to Krimer, director of the Centro Versiliese delle Arti, a touring group exhibition of contemporary Tuscan painting for the towns of Tuscany.
In the summer, at the Lindau Museum on the German shore of Lake Constance, a group exhibition of artists of the Centro Versiliese delle Arti opened, with works by Catarsini and 36 other artists.
In the summer he entered the Lauro d’Oro Vallombrosa Prize for the figurative arts, held during the Vallombrosa Prize for poetry and journalism, and one of his works was chosen among the fifty exhibitors selected by the jury. Again in the summer he took part in Carrara in the Triglia d’Oro exhibition of sea subjects, and at Francavilla al Mare in the F. P. Michetti Prize. In August he gave a work to an exhibition in aid of Unicef, held at the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara.
In October the Bottega dei Vàgeri gave him a large solo show, with eighty-five works — oils, drawings and monotypes. The catalogue was introduced by Pier Carlo Santini, and the show was a great success with public and critics alike.

1957
In February he took part in Naples in the exhibition of the International Union of Pure Art, held in the halls of the Maschio Angioino.
At the end of March he held a solo show in Rome, at the gallery of the Libreria Macchia, with small-format works; Leonida Rèpaci, Fortunato Bellonzi and Marcello Venturoli were at the opening. Pier Carlo Santini spoke of “the happiness of an evocation entrusted to a few touches”. He took part in the First Querceta Prize for painting and sculpture. He showed four oils and some twenty drawings at the group exhibition of Viareggio and Versilian artists at the Bottega dei Vàgeri, his works noted for their great spiritual worth and sensibility. He was awarded a prize for the painting Natura morta at the National Painting and Drawing Competition held by the Society of Fine Arts and the Artists’ Circle of Florence. In June he entered the competition for the Quadro minimo in Florence, winning joint first prize, and in August the Vallombrosa Prize.
At the III National Exhibition-Competition of Contemporary Portraiture, held in October by the Society of Fine Arts at the Casa di Dante in Florence, he won the Olivetti Prize for the work Ritratto della modella.

1958
In January he took part in the first review I Maestri e i Pittori Toscani Contemporanei at the “La Permanente” gallery of modern art in Florence.
He was called to chair the jury of the 1958 Amiata Prize for the figurative arts at Abbadia San Salvatore.
He took part in the XXXIX Exhibition-Competition for the Grand Medal of the Society of Fine Arts and Artists’ Circle of Florence, winning the diploma of honour and the society’s medal with the painting Stoccafissi. He took part in the First Butterfly open-air painting prize at Torre del Lago, winning second prize with the painting I barchini. In June he sat on the jury of the III Festival of Tuscan Women Painters held by the Centro Versiliese per le Arti and the Versilia tourist board. He gave a painting to the prize fund of the «Franco Viani» poetry prize, held by the Centro Versiliese delle Arti and by Giulia Viani in memory of her son Franco.
In July he was in Rome for a group show of Versilian artists at the Galleria Macchia, organised with the Centro Versiliese delle Arti. In August he took part in the F. P. Michetti Prize at Francavilla al Mare in Abruzzo. In September he introduced Krimer’s exhibition Fantasie colorate at the Buca di Giotto in Pisa; Giulia Viani, Lorenzo’s widow, was also there.
He wrote the stories Il mio Agnellino and La festa di Santa Lucia, and Giulia Viani wrote to him the following January: “…‘Il mio agnellino’ truly moved me: ‘Annetta’ seemed to me one of those women drawn by our Lorenzo, one of those working women who feel maternal love most strongly, worn out, dulled by a life of hardship…”; she also sent him a postcard with a picture of Viani writing.
In November he joined the executive committee of the Viareggio Book Fair, and on 31 December he was made a member of the Accademia Tiberina in Rome. The Accademia Tiberina, founded in 1813, exists to keep alive the flame of artistic, historical, literary and scientific study in Italy and in the world; its members have included Antonio Canova, Ugo Foscolo, Silvio Pellico, Massimo D’Azeglio and Guglielmo Marconi.

1959
In January he received the congratulations of the Mayor of Viareggio, Antonio Catelli, on his admission to the Accademia Tiberina.
He took part in the Second Versilian Art Biennale. In June he entered the Ramazzotti Prize in Milan and showed at the exhibition held at the Palazzo della Permanente. That same year his son Orazio moved to Messina to teach veterinary clinical medicine at the university there, and settled in the city. He took part in the VIII National Quadrennial of Art in Rome. In June the President of the Republic Giovanni Gronchi made him an Officer of the Republic in recognition of his particular merits, and he became a full member of the Academia Latinitati Excolendae in Rome. He took part in the International Exhibition of Figurative Art “Il Capolavoro” at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, where he received a gold medal.

1960
In the summer he sat on the committee awarding the prize for the best cover at the fifth Viareggio Book Fair, won by the Roman publisher Canesi for A. D. Rogers’s book Rapporto sullo spionaggio. In this period he kept up a lively correspondence with Arturo Dazzi. In July the Sarzana publisher Marco Carpena, who created the “Enrico Pea” literary prize, thanked him for sending some “precious” drawings. In September he took part in the National Exhibition of Contemporary Art on the theme of hunting held in Florence, and was among the organisers of the Margherita d’oro Prize at the Gran Caffè Margherita in Viareggio. In December he took part in Terni in the XI Città di Terni National Competition of Painting and Engraving. For several months he had the Brazilian painter and draughtsman Aldemir Martins staying at his house with his wife Cora and daughter Mariana, during their time in Italy on a scholarship at the Venice Biennale. Martins had taken part in the 1956 Biennale, where he had received the prize of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers. In those Italian months Martins and Catarsini liked to draw together; Catarsini was struck by Martins’s work and would be influenced by his highly elaborate drawings and his exuberantly coloured paintings. Their friendship and mutual esteem lasted after Martins returned home.

1961
He took part in the Autostrada del Sole National Landscape Prize, announced by the Rome Quadrennial. The Florentine publisher Vallecchi invited him to contribute drawings and texts to the Agenda Vallecchi 1961. He went to Messina, where his son had been teaching at the university for two years, to take part in the black-and-white exhibition Omaggio alla Poesia di Vann’Antò, on the first anniversary of the poet’s death (Giovanni Antonio Di Giacomo, known as Vann’Antò, was a dialect poet and university professor of folk traditions).
In the summer he again sat on the committee awarding the prize for the best cover at the sixth Viareggio Book Fair; the jury also included Mayor Catelli, Uberto Bonetti and Franca Taylor.
He took part in the National Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Black and White at San Benedetto del Tronto, where he had already shown in 1955 and 1959.
He began writing for the Viareggio pages of the daily La Nazione, with the column I bozzetti di Alfredo Catarsini.
During his years teaching at the art institute in Pietrasanta he renewed the library and invited important artists and writers to visit the school and give lessons. In 1961 Leonida Rèpaci and Francesco Messina were guests.

1962
In February he took part in the VI National Exhibition-Competition of Contemporary Portraiture, at the Galleries of the Accademia in Florence.
At the «San Luca» gallery in via del Babuino, Rome, he showed a retrospective of some sixty works representing three important phases of his painting: Realism, Riflessismo and Neosurrealism. Leonida Rèpaci signed the flattering catalogue introduction.
His friend Aristide Coluccini, painter and sculptor from Valdicastello, wrote to him on 27 February: “…I wish you great success, and I think it is high time we recognised artists who, although living in the provinces, work seriously and without pause…”.
For Catarsini, living in Versilia had always been a deliberate, considered choice, in the clear knowledge that provincial life did not take from his art but enriched it: “…To live in the provinces does not mean cutting oneself off from the great enigmatic world of the arts; on the contrary, living there means taking it in on a more human and essential scale…”.
In May he held a solo show at the Galleria Il Fondaco in Messina, and in July showed at the XIX Maritime Exhibition in Livorno.
In July he was at the First National Exhibition of Sarzana, where he won the gold medal with the painting Paesaggio toscano. The Mayor of Viareggio, Professor Antonio Catelli, congratulated him in a letter of 21 July.
Once again he was among the jurors awarding the prize for the best cover at the Viareggio Book Fair.
Some of his works were included in the catalogue of the collections of the Print and Drawing Room of the Institute of Art History in Pisa, a public collection of contemporary graphic art of more than 8,000 works on paper. The collection had been conceived and willed by Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, who in 1958 had invited Italian and foreign artists to help form it.
He sat on the committee judging the official poster for the canonisation of Blessed Pucci, Viareggio’s much-loved “Curatino”, who died in 1892 and whose memory is still keenly felt in the town for all the good he did for the community of which he had been parish priest for forty-eight years.

1963
On 31 March a solo show of thirty works opened in the small hall of the Gran Caffè Margherita in his home town, and was a very great success.
He took part in the Second National Exhibition of the Quadro Minimo at the Galleria Bizacuma in Pontedera.

1964
On 18 January a solo show opened at the GAI gallery (Galleria d’Arte Internazionale) in via Tornabuoni, Florence; the catalogue carried texts by L. Rèpaci, P. C. Santini and G. Rago.
In June he was in Munich for the group exhibition Catarsini, Guidi, Orlandi, Puliti, held by the Atelier Monpti gallery and the Italian Cultural Institute of Munich for the Atelier München Schwabing 1964 prize. At the exhibition he was awarded the Dante Alighieri prize.
In August he took part in the Rotonda Prize at the Pineta dell’Ardenza in Livorno, and in September showed at the exhibition of contemporary Italian artists at the «Primo Piano» gallery in Padua. In Florence he took part in the Second International Review on hunting with the painting Nidi del Picchio, which was awarded a prize. In December, for a charity auction held by the «La Navicella» gallery in Viareggio, he gave the painting Pescherecci all’ancora.

1965
In May he took part in Florence in the IV National Art and Sport Exhibition, Trofeo Medaglia, and in August he was at the First Corciano 1965 National Painting Prize in Umbria. At the Europa Arte 1965 International Prize he received a certificate of merit for his wide and worthy artistic activity.

1966-1967
In June he showed at the exhibition Artistes Italiens Contemporains at the «La palette bleue» gallery in Paris; in September the same exhibition moved to the «Primo Piano» gallery in Padua under the title Collettiva di Artisti Italiani Contemporanei.
He took part in the Christmas Exhibition and the Annual Prize for Art History held by the documentation and cultural events centre of the European Institute of Art History in Milan, and was awarded the Silver Star at the Institute’s annual prize. In 1967 he took part in the 2nd Charitas National Prize with the religious paintings Bussa ti sarà aperto and In cerca di carità.

1968
In March he began writing for the monthly Versilia oggi, founded by Giorgio Giannelli in 1966, with stories and articles accompanied by his own drawings of the people and settings described; the column was called Incontri con Catarsini, and he wrote for it until 1982.
On 5 April, beneath the Torre Matilde, he delivered the public funeral oration for Moses Levy before the body was taken to the Jewish cemetery in Pisa.
He held a solo show in the exhibition hall of the Gran Caffè Margherita in Viareggio, with works from 1945 to 1968.
He left his teaching post at the Stagio Stagi art institute in Pietrasanta, where in his last years he had held the chair of drawing from life.

1969
With Edizioni del Testimone of Lucca he published his first novel, Giorni neri, whose story grew out of an episode from his own life, tied to the hardships of evacuation and the partisan struggle.
The author describes in lyrical prose the places and the people of a story that unfolds in the hard years of the clandestine fight for Liberation in the Lucca area. Catarsini wrote in his introduction: “…This piece originally came out of many notes… of the clandestine guerrilla war there are episodes (fictionalised) of the hard life spent in hiding by some of the evacuees.”
In this period his work in painting went on developing themes tied to Mechanical Symbolism.
In December the critic Pier Carlo Santini visited his studio at Palazzo Paolina. He took part with three Composizioni Meccaniche in the Tenth Exhibition of artists of the province of Lucca, held at the Real Collegio. On the 28th of the same month an important show of his work opened at the Il Fondaco gallery in Messina, running until 9 January the following year. Again in December, at Antonio Barghini’s La Fenice gallery in Lido di Camaiore, he took part in a group show that also included works by Santini, Liberatore, Pardini, Acci, Saporetti, Chini and Viani.

1970-1971
The publisher Bugatti devoted a monograph to him in the series “Protagonisti dell’Arte Contemporanea”. Pier Carlo Santini wrote there: “…Today Catarsini explores the world of machines: archaic machines in settings saturated with fumes and smoke: wheels, pulleys, spools, flywheels glimpsed as though absorbed into enigmatic signs, or standing out suddenly among corroded, sweating matter. And together with these contrivances of uncertain use but assigned fate we see emanations and diverging rays, with presences and fluids that taint the air and stifle the breath. It is Catarsini’s way of restating the solitude of man overwhelmed by the mechanism he has made with his own hands…”
In 1971 in Viareggio he took part in the Exhibition of Viareggio Painters of the 1940s and held a solo show at the Galleria La Conchiglia. He became friends with Paolo Barsacchi, whose political career he would follow with affection. He was invited by the Centro Culturale Interarte to the Exposition de la Peinture Italienne at the Salon Babylon in Paris, where he won the gold medal for the work Composizione Meccanica, “for his originality and artistic creativity”. He took part with four works in the art exhibition at the primary school of Giustagnana (a small hamlet in the municipality of Seravezza), held in memory of the exhibitions Lorenzo Viani used to hold in those same rooms, where his wife taught. At the seventh edition of the Uliveto Terme painting prize he won the gold medal of the Under-Secretary of State, the Hon. Loris Biagioni, for the painting Composizione oggetti meccanici. Of his Mechanical Symbolism works Marcello Passeri wrote: “Alfredo Catarsini is one of the few painters able (while staying within the critical climate) to offer a translation — let us say lyrical — of technological civilisation. In the always well-rendered atmosphere of the machine as emblem, the human figure too becomes rigid, mechanised, or even reduced to a ghostly, hallucinatory apparition…”.

1972-1975
The GAI, Galleria d’Arte Internazionale of Florence, held an exhibition between March and April in which the artist showed works from three periods of his art. The show was introduced by Carlo Emanuele Bugatti.
In these years he devoted himself to the Composizioni Fantastiche, in which surrealism is joined to natural forms in a synthesis of restless shapes. In May 1973 he held a solo show of graphic work at the Studio Lito in Viareggio. In October the Ai Frati cultural circle of Cagliari held a retrospective at the convent of San Domenico.
But 1973 was also a year of great sorrow for Catarsini, because his beloved wife died at only 71. Catarsini portrayed himself in several drawings and paintings with expressions of deep grief; in this period art remained his only consolation.
In 1975 he showed at the Buca del Barone gallery in Empoli, and one of his works was in the charity auction of the Galleria Giorgi in Florence in aid of the Association of Lay People in the Service of the Missions.

1976
In March La Nazione published an interview by Emilio Paoli in which Catarsini described why he was a painter: “Painting is a way of existing; at moments this existing gives me a sense of happiness, it almost lifts me…”
He took part in the exhibition of teachers of the Stagio Stagi art institute in Pietrasanta, and in October held a solo show at the Galleria La Conchiglia in Turin.

1977
The papers that year announced a new book of his, Fra l’incudine e il martello, set in the Viareggio of the 1920s between anarchist hotbeds and socialist ideals; for various reasons the book was never published. In July he took part in the First Review of Figurative Art, Omaggio a Lorenzo Viani e Moses Levy, held by the Il Magazzino del Sale gallery of Viareggio along the seafront and in Piazza Mazzini. Again in July he took part in Sarzana in the IX «Colori della Lunigiana» Biennale, where he showed a composition of mechanical objects. During the 47th Viareggio Literary Prize he met again Primo Conti, with whom he had kept up esteem and friendship since the early 1930s.
In October he took part in a group show held by the Magazzino del Sale in Corso Garibaldi, Viareggio.

1978
He was asked by the president of the Carnival Committee to chair the jury for the large and small float categories and the masquerade groups.
He was in the exhibition Arte a Lucca 1900-1945 at Palazzo Mansi in Lucca.
He took part in the XV and last edition of the Santa Margherita Ligure National Prize for figurative painting, in which he had taken part before. In Milan he won the First Triade Painting Prize with the work Le orfanelle, “for its expressive force in relation to sorrow in human tragedy”.

1979
In the summer he was in the group show at the La Prora art centre in Viareggio. At the Trofeo Master international competition, held by the San Marco cultural centre of Milan, he received the first prize outside the competition proper. On 29 November Rai paid tribute to him with a feature on Cronache italiane by Romano Battaglia, who called him “one of the most accomplished living painters of Tuscan romanticism”.

1980
He met Vittorio Greco, who became keeper of the first archive of his graphic and painted work. He began to spend long periods in Lodi, where his granddaughter Elena Martinelli worked.
In February he took part in a group show at the L’Approdo gallery in Lido di Camaiore alongside the most important painters of Versilia, with works by Lorenzo Viani and Galileo Chini also on show. In June, at the cultural circle in via Carlo Alberto in Turin, he presented his monograph before the press, Italian television and Teleuropa.

1981
On 23 June a large retrospective of more than two hundred works opened at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, arranged by Vittorio Greco under the patronage of the Region of Tuscany, the City of Viareggio and the Florence tourist board.
He gave the painting Autoritratto to the Centre of Contemporary Art then being founded in the City of Florence; the painting is recorded as no. 945 in the general catalogue.

1982
In Milan, at a Brerarte auction, a painting of his from 1957, from the Mechanical Symbolism period, was knocked down for 10 million lire.
In May he went to Paris for an exhibition in the Grande Salle of the Chamber of Commerce at the Italian Embassy. Thirty paintings were shown, representing the various phases of his work: portraits, landscapes, still lifes and compositions. Catarsini was called “Dernier Romantique de la Peinture Italienne”, and the show was a great success with critics and public.
In October the City of Ferrara devoted a retrospective to him at the Massari Gallery of Modern Art and the Palazzo dei Diamanti, showing works from the Mechanical Symbolism period, in which from the 1950s onwards the artist probed the duality of man and machine and the ever more brutal intrusion of machines of every kind into human life. Catarsini created hybrids, often dramatic and enigmatic, in which man struggles against mechanical contrivances to keep his dignity. On 15 November the Mayor of Viareggio, Paolo Barsacchi, wrote to the artist conveying the thanks of President Pertini, to whom he had given one of his paintings.

1983
The City of Viareggio devoted a retrospective to the artist at Palazzo Paolina, with as many as one hundred and seventy works — oils, watercolours and drawings. The exhibition was curated by Mario De Micheli, and the catalogue carried critical texts by De Micheli himself, Tommaso Paloscia and Franco Farina.
In October a wide-ranging retrospective opened at the Artists’ Circle of Turin.

1984
In July, organised by the Saint-Vincent cultural centre at the Hotel Billia, a tribute exhibition to his art was held, showing some previously unseen paintings; the catalogue carried texts by Mario De Micheli, Tommaso Paloscia, Paolo Levi and Franco Solmi.
On 3 October he received a warm letter of thanks from Bettino Craxi, then Prime Minister, for a work he had given him.
In November he held a solo show at the Il Triangolo gallery in Cremona, with many Versilian landscapes.
A great many of Catarsini’s works tell of the sea, of boats, of sailors and fishermen and of the poor things of fishing; in his paintings he does not record the showy gaiety of summer but catches the fine melancholy these places give off, which not everyone manages to feel, building over the years a painted poem of the land he loved.
In December the Region of Piedmont promoted a solo show at the Detto Dalmastro cultural circle in Cuneo.

1985
At the Domenici bathing establishment in Lido di Camaiore the painter invented “the Parasol of Wisdom”; in the cool shade of a beach umbrella people stopped to talk of music, art, theatre and even sport, to give their holidays a note of culture and commitment.
In May one of his paintings of 1951 was sold at Sotheby’s for more than four million lire.

1986
At Arte Fiera in Bologna the Turin gallery Agorà San Lorenzo showed the painting Ciclisti, of 1942, which aroused great interest. In November Senator Paolo Barsacchi, an admirer and friend of the painter, died prematurely; Catarsini wrote a moved tribute to him in the local papers.

1987-1988
In the summer he went on drawing by the sea and talking of art and literature beneath “the Parasol of Wisdom” at the Bagno Domenici in Lido di Camaiore.
He took part in the Cultura Mercato 1988 exhibition at Sarnano in the province of Macerata; among the works shown were Capanni sul mare of 1936 and Ciclisti of 1942. In December the City of Milan devoted a retrospective to him entitled Alfredo Catarsini, sessant’anni di pittura, curated by Angelo Mistrangelo; in the rooms of the Museum of Sant’Andrea were shown oils, watercolours and drawings covering the artist’s whole career, from the paintings of the 1920s to the landscapes and seascapes of his beloved Versilia and the unsettling, intense paintings of the Mechanical Symbolism period.

1989
In the summer, in Turin, the Piemonte Artistico e Culturale association hosted an exhibition of works chosen from 1920 to 1984, curated by Angelo Mistrangelo. In these years he spent long periods in Lodi, where his granddaughter Elena lived; he passed the time drawing and cycling along the Adda on his beloved bicycle, always his only means of transport. Catarsini had always refused to take a driving licence, holding cars to be “sardine tins”, while the bicycle was for him “the finest invention”. In Lodi itself, in October, during the Oldrado Da Ponte painting review, he was awarded the gold medal of the Eighth Arvini Prize in recognition of a life spent in the service of art.

1990
On 17 January the city council of Viareggio celebrated his 91st birthday with a large ceremony — out of superstition Catarsini had not wanted to mark his 90th — attended by Mayor Antonio Cima, councillors Aldo Belli and Alberto Ferrari, the painters Renato Santini, Serafino Beconi and Giuliana Pardini, and many former pupils of the Stagio Stagi art institute.
He went on painting and cycling around his beloved Viareggio on his Isotta (as he called his bicycle).

1991
The City of Viareggio paid tribute to the painter with a retrospective in the rooms of Palazzo Paolina, in whose attics Catarsini had had his studio for many years. The exhibition followed the painter’s whole artistic path, giving a wide view of what he could do. A cultivated and responsive man, the artist brought back to his Viareggio and into his work all the ferment of national and international art that passed during his long life, trying different ways of painting without ever wholly abandoning one for another. Taking in the various suggestions and remaking them, he crosses and fuses in his work the figurative, primitivism, abstraction, surrealism and symbolism, all bound together in an elegy entirely his own, addressed to his town and its people.

1992
He took part in the group exhibition Artisti Versiliesi dal ’900 a oggi, shown at the Teatro Modernissimo in Massarosa and later at the French Institute in Florence.

1993
On 28 March he died in his house in Via Palermo in Viareggio, today the seat of the Fondazione Alfredo Catarsini 1899. He drew to the last, making his own the motto Pliny the Elder attributed to Apelles: Nullo die sine linea.