The mission
Fondazione Alfredo Catarsini 1899
La Fondazione Alfredo Catarsini 1899 ETS was founded on 29 June 2020 on the initiative of the Maestro’s granddaughter, Elena Anna Rita Martinelli, and her husband Gianvittorio Serralunga, in memory of her mother Mity Catarsini.
The long-term projects
Travelling exhibition — Catarsini’s twentieth century
The travelling exhibition brings together a selection of works from the 1930s to the 1980s to tell the artistic journey of Alfredo Catarsini (Viareggio, 1899–1993).
The trail — The places of Catarsini
A scattered exhibition of 43 works by Alfredo Catarsini, held in 10 venues in public buildings, to be reached on foot or otherwise along three staged routes of varying length linking Lucca to Versilia by way of the Val Freddana.
Alfredo Catarsini regional prize
A competition run with the Regional Schools Office for Tuscany, part of the multi-year projects The Trail — The places of Catarsini and Art accessible to everyone.
Art accessible to everyone
A Foundation project working across several fields: young people, training, culture, tourism and wellbeing and leisure, with the aim of building a network of inclusion for people with sight impairments, turning places of culture and tourism into experiences of touch and sound, so that everyone can enjoy beauty in full independence and freedom.
About the Foundation
Alongside protecting and promoting the intellectual and artistic work of Maestro Alfredo Catarsini — in his many roles as painter, writer, critic and moving spirit behind cultural ventures — the Foundation draws on the principles of the Italian third sector. Its statutory aims include pursuing, proposing and fostering the promotion, dissemination, teaching, research and training of every activity bearing on the “artistic disciplines” in all their forms, through the spread and widening of human knowledge, contact between people, institutions and associations, and support for young talent.
In particular, the Foundation carries out the following activities on a settled, organised basis:
- research, studies and cataloguing concerning the history and the cultural, educational and artistic experience of Maestro Alfredo Catarsini and the “artistic disciplines”, by setting up study centres and scholarships and by continuing the Alfredo Catarsini Prize;
- widespread teaching about his painting and about the artistic disciplines in general, both to spread knowledge and for educational purposes in schools of every level, art institutes and universities, including social, socio-educational, inclusion and integration purposes;
- exhibitions, seminars, conferences, debates, workshops, festivals and any other event of particular historical, artistic and cultural interest, publishing the related proceedings, documents, catalogues and so on;
- caring for, developing and preserving the works, the furnishings and the historical archive of the Alfredo Catarsini Atelier, now housed and open to the public at the Villa Paolina Bonaparte Museum in Viareggio.