Marino Marini

Born Pistoia, 27 Feb 1901; died Viareggio, 6 Aug 1980.

Italian sculptor, painter, draughtsman and printmaker. He studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, joining in 1917 the classes in engraving and painting given by Galileo Chini and in 1922 those in sculpture under Domenico Trentacoste. He drew small subjects from life, such as flowers, birds and insects, and he also modelled and painted. After military service in 1924, he settled in Florence, where he opened his first studio. He worked intensively, experimenting with different materials, from terracotta to wood and plaster combined with paint, which he also sometimes used with bronze in order to accentuate forms and express movement. Marini made his début as a sculptor in 1928, when he exhibited at La mostra del Novecento toscano at the Galleria Milano in Milan. His sculptures of this period were free of any ornament or descriptive detail: they referred to history and occasionally to the fascinating symbolism of Roman and Etruscan statuary, or the Etruscan-inspired sculpture of Arturo Martini or the traditions of the Tuscan Quattrocento. Marini’s work developed a mysterious mythical quality, for example in People (1929; Milan, Gal. A. Mod.), a small, coloured terracotta statue.

During the 1920s Marini travelled frequently to Paris, where he met Picasso, Laurens, Braque, Lipchitz and Maillol. In 1929, however, he settled in Lombardy at the invitation of Arturo Martini as his successor in the teaching of sculpture at the Scuola d’Arte della Villa Reale in Monza. He exhibited at the Seconda mostra del Novecento italiano in Milan in 1929 and subsequently in the group’s exhibitions in Nice (1929), Basle (1930), and Helsinki and Stockholm (1931). In 1932 he had his first one-man exhibition at the Galleria Milano. In the 1930s he again travelled extensively in Europe, visiting Holland, England, Belgium, Austria, Germany and above all Paris, where he was able to renew contact with avant-garde artists such as Tanguy, De Chirico, Campigli and Kandinsky. He was a guest at all the major Italian exhibitions of the 1930s, including the Venice Biennales, the Milan Triennales and the Rome Quadriennales: in 1935 he received his first official recognition, winning the first prize for sculpture in the second Rome Quadriennale. His work in the 1930s was characterized by the continuing use of antique references and a formal quality of static equilibrium. For example, the heroic cycle of Horsemen begun in 1936 was marked by a search for balance between the juxtaposed masses of compact blocks of stone: the works were firmly established in the sculptural tradition of the Italian Novecento, for example the four bronze casts of the Gentleman on Horseback of 1937 (h. 1.56 m, version, Ottawa, N.G.).

In 1940 Marini resigned from his teaching post in Monza and became Professor of Sculpture at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan. During World War II he was in Locarno, where he befriended Giacometti, Fritz Wotruba and Hermann Haller. During this time he sculpted sensual, enigmatic female nudes, sometimes lacking head or arms in order to stress their resemblance to fragments of antique sculpture. These included the Pomona series and Adolescent Girl (1943). In 1946 he returned to Milan. From his home–studio near the Accademia in the late 1940s he arrived at the culmination of the monumental expression of the previous decade. In his return to sculpture, painting and engraving he produced variations on the theme of Horsemen, Warriors and Jugglers, which expressed ever more urgently Marini’s anguish over the uncertainties of the time. They symbolized the destruction of the myth of the heroic victor. In contrast with the noble figures of the 1930s, the Horsemen reappeared in 1946 as disorientated, tragic characters (e.g. Horseman, bronze, 1.64×1.55×0.67 m, 1947; London, Tate). A sense of tension is conveyed by the contrast between the horizontal lines of the vast back, long lowered neck and flattened head of the horse, and the vertical horseman, erect with fear. The harshness of the image is increased by the simplification of the forms, the rider without ears and with round, sunken eyes. Moreover, the overall balance between the juxtaposed masses enhances the expressionistic tragedy of the whole. As well as using bronze, Marini appreciated that the simplicity of stone and particularly clay and wood was well suited to this drastic simplification of form. He also developed the same theme in painting (e.g. Horsemen, mixed media, 1946; Antwerp, Openluchtmus. Beeldhouwkst Middelheim).

Marini visited the USA in 1950 for an exhibition at the gallery of the dealer Curt Valentin in New York. There Marini befriended such artists as Lipchitz, Alexander Calder, Arp, Lyonel Feininger and Max Beckmann. The success of his exhibition far exceeded even the most optimistic predictions and introduced him to the American art market. Other accolades followed, such as the sculpture prize at the Venice Biennale of 1952 and the Feltrinelli international prize for sculpture at the Accademia dei Lincei, Rome, in 1954. Marini’s American experiences also contributed to a new artistic liberty: expressionistic vitality and a tragic sense found form in such abstract works as Miracle (1959–60; Turin, Gal. Civ. A. Mod.) and Horseman (1958–9), an open-air war memorial in The Hague.

In the 1960s Marini had further important exhibitions, including a one-man show at the Kunsthaus, Zürich (1962), and a retrospective in the Palazzo Venezia in Rome (1966). He also produced a long series of busts of contemporaries (e.g. Henry Moore, bronze, 1962; London, N.P.G.). However, distorted abstract works recalling animal or human forms predominated in both his sculpture and painting, which took on greater importance with intensified colour. The large abstract stone sculptures of the 1970s (e.g. Ideal Composition, l. 2.26 m) are characterized by extremely rough surfaces and, on occasion, energetic paintwork (e.g. Idea of the Miracle, h. 2.43 m, both 1971; Florence, Mus. Marino Marini). There are museums devoted to Marini’s work in Milan, Pistoia and Florence.

Silvia Lucchesi. "Marini, Marino." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T054406 (accessed April 11, 2012).