| The ideological torment running through the entire work of this Artist cannot help but involve
the observer depending on his or her degree of culture, sensitivity or awareness. Before any
painting of his, one cannot help but experience a profound sense of participation, including
the bitterness the Artist reveals for the state of increasingly irretrievable “alienation” of
mankind. Constant themes in his works are: man and the environment, man and those like
him, the ambiguity of human behavior in relation to the Unity he fails to obtain, the stifled spirit
of brotherhood that Cataldi invokes and pursues, committing himself to describing in pictures
the mistakes and contradictions that create often insurmountable barriers rather than bridges
among human beings. At the center of his creativity is the spirit of participation that stands
out in all of his compositions, from his early ones – permeated with poetry in their exquisite
apparent formality – to his present creations which show a pressing maturity and a clear
awareness of human behavior (in its indefinable structure) but also and above all with the
sphere of the unconscious – subconscious that makes its presence felt everywhere. Aside
from the recognition he has already received from specialized critics, different and deeper
awareness by the observer in general would be in order, hence the acknowledgement he
deserves for his excellent artistic, cultural and ideological qualities. It would be superfluous
to say any more than that, and things superfluous are just what Cataldi doesn’t like. His art is
that of the essential, or, if you like, that which is essential in the service of Art.
The observer will understand better and to a greater extent than anyone else how to be
guided by the artistic skill of Cataldi, in what I call ̈ "The Richly Imaginative Labyrinth” or the
realm of the imagination and will be able to assess the unquestionable efficacy of what he or
she is confronted with. But let us leave discussions for the paintings themselves and conclude
by saying: "a picture is worth more than a hundred words but a picture cannot survive without
integration ".
P. S.: RICH IMAGINATION = a clever creator or conjurer of images, an epithet by the poet
D'Annunzio. |
