Marino Marini

Lessons with Domenico Trentacosta; numerous study trips

Marino Marini was born on 27 February 1901 in Pistoia. He found his path to art early on and began studying sculpture and painting at the Academy of Arts in Florence in 1917 where one of his teachers was Domenico Trentacosta. He visited Paris for the first time in 1928 and one year later became a lecturer at the art school of the Villa Reale di Monza in Milan, a position he held for more than a decade. In the following period, Marini visited Paris several times where he made the acquaintance of Aristide Maillol, Wassily Kandinsky and Giorgio de Chirico, and later, Henri Laurens, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. As well as the artistically fruitful sojourns in France, Marini undertook further trips to Greece, Germany and England. In 1940, he moved from the Villa Reale di Monza to the Accademia di Brera, whilst during a five-year period in Tessin, Switzerland, he met Germaine Richier, Fritz Wotruba and Alberto Giacometti. In 1950, Marini celebrated a particular premiere: Curt Valentin mediated his first solo exhibition in the USA in the Buchholz Gallery. In 1954, Marini’s friend and patron, Valentin, died, but by then the Italian was a celebrated great in the art market.

Classical ideals against avant-garde provocations

Despite the numerous fruitful acquaintances Marino Marini cultivated with other great artists of his time, it was the art of a long-dead civilisation to which he owed probably his most important inspiration: In his Tuscan homeland he was witness to ever more archaeological discoveries of the antique Etruscan culture. The style of past times spirited Marini to a new understanding of art and the Etruscan equestrian statues in particular inspired him to his formative leitmotif, that of the relationship between man and horse which he explored in numerous works of ever new dimensions. A stud farm located near to his long-term place of work in the Villa Reale enabled him to study horses intensively, which he incorporated into his work. With his return to classical ideals, he also positioned himself against the radically provocative theses of his avant-garde contemporaries who upheld the complete destruction of the existing canon of forms. 

Rich exhibition activity and many awards

As well as his numerous horse sculptures, made preferably in bronze or wood, Marini won attention especially for his lithographs. In the 1960s and 1970s, he created numerous colour-rich prints, mostly depicting people and horses, and mostly grouped in cycles. Marino Marini received prizes and awards for his art, was a member of several academies and took part in the first three Document exhibitions in Kassel. During his lifetime he was honoured already with major retrospectives. 

Marino Marini died in Viareggio on 6 August 1980.