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"The Harlequins" B Version
Year: 2016
Measurements: 100cm x 70cm
Technique: Oil and acrylic on canvas
“Every time I paint a harlequin it always feels like it’s the first time…”
(Cesare Catania)
Thus explains the author, deeply linked to the character of Harlequin for his emotional charge, for his comic and dramatic guise at the same time.
A Fantastic Scene
In this “B Version” the author proposes the theme of harlequins again. The scene, set in a garden of exotic plants under a blue, starry sky, portrays the two protagonists intent on playing. The two harlequins by Cesare Catania are, also in this “B Version”, with their heads detached from the body (as they were in the “A Version” and as they will be in the “C Version“) and fill the canvas in an absolutely singular way and personal. The one on the left, with his body facing downwards and supported by his arms, plays while balancing his friend’s head on his legs; the one on the right, lying supine and relaxed, with an air of superiority, ignores the features of the other, who in the meantime has placed his head on his back. It is easy to distinguish the heads of the two harlequins by observing their colours: yellow that of the harlequin on the left, pink that of the harlequin on the right.
The only one interested in the scene seems to be the yellow Harlequin who carefully observes what is happening to his body and his friend’s head.
Critical Insight
“In his works, Catania does not emulate organic appropriations in the pigment, but kneads the virtue of the line. It is not an art of lacerations, but one that deeply welcomes and offers the serenity and virile strength of which he has structured the inexhaustible register of emotions human.” (Critical Text – Edoardo Callegari)
technical in-depth analysis
The Details of the ArtWork
In the image above you can clearly observe the Yellow Harlequin, one of the two harlequins that dominate the scene. Head away from the body, indicating, as usual for the artist, a moment of carefreeness and intellectual lightness.
Below, the plants are highlighted, an essential element in Cesare Catania’s informal art. An element that denotes both the artist’s attachment to nature but also the desire to balance, with agile and sinuous forms, a scene that otherwise would be static and incomplete.
Below is the Pink Harlequin, the one who occupies most of the scene of the two. As with the yellow harlequin, the pink one is also synthetically represented by the bust (an inverted cone), the legs, an arm and the head, which is also never attached to the body. In practice, Cesare Catania’s “Heads” represent an element separate from his characters, who in this way live a life of their own independently of their own thoughts and ideas. A world that of Catania in which the characters therefore live carefree and light.
A Digital World to explain Physical Reality
Initially created to try to explain the physical work, the digital version of the Harlequins then had its stable and autonomous place in the artistic poetics of Cesare Catania. A true work of digital video art, which retraces the movements of the two harlequins a few seconds before being indelibly imprinted on the physical canvas. In practice, Catania painted the final scene in 2016 and then retraces the moments prior to that idea a few years later: in practice, first the inspiration is portrayed in its most complete form and then its evolutions are represented, all in two works of distinct art which however originate from the same inspiration: that of two Harlequins playing.
Cultural Background
The Harlequin Collection
Cesare Catania’s Harlequins have also seen a sculptural version, belonging to the “The Other Side of the Moon“, collection, a collection in which the author wanted to pay homage not only to the city of Venice but also to the Harlequin Carnival Mask with a version in rusty steel and resin silicone (image below).
And finally there is her, the first version of the Arlecchino created in 2015 by Cesare Catania: The Harlequin A Version . A milestone in the artistic poetics of the Italian author (below the version revisited in 2018 for a limited edition print)
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