Marino Marini

Marino Marini was undoubtedly one of the most outstanding European sculptors and painters of the 20th century. His works found international recognition very early on, as early as the 1930s, and since the post-war period, interest in his works has steadily increased. His poetics, expressed in just a few motifs, his entire world of relationships and reflections on man and his life have a density of messages and a suggestive ability that make his work extremely modern.

For Marini, the depiction of the human being took centre stage. In his figurative sculptures, he limited himself to a few themes, such as nudes, acrobats, dancers and particularly favoured groups of horses with riders. The rider is often naked and connected to the horse’s body like a centaur, bursting with strength or wounded, leaning or falling. He expresses sensitivities, but is also a political symbol. As a sculptor, Marini liked to work with bronze and wood. His style was archaic and particularly influenced by Etruscan art. However, Cubism also inspired the Italian in formal terms. In his later work, he strove for an abstracting simplification of form, combining the impression of weight and balance with a strong tension created by the dynamic contrast of vertical and horizontal or diagonal masses.

– 1901 Marino Marini was born on 27 February in Pistoia (Tuscany)

– 1917 Studied painting and sculpture at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence

– 1928 First stay in Paris

– 1929-40 Teacher at the Scuola D’Arte di Villa Reale in Monza near Milan. Frequent trips to Paris; encounters with Campigli, Chirico, de Pisis, acquaintance with González, Kandinsky and Maillol, later with Picasso, Braque and Laurens. Stays in England, Holland, Germany and Greece

– 1932 First solo exhibition in Milan. Participates in the Venice Biennale. Honorary member of the Florentine Academy of Fine Arts > Breakthrough in his artistic career

– 1935 Grand Prize for Sculpture at the II Quadriennale in Rome

– 1937 Represented at the World Exhibition in Paris. Grand Prize for Sculpture at the International Exhibition in Paris

– 1938 Marriage to Mercedes Pedrazzini

– 1941 Professor of Sculpture at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan. Loses his studio in air raids; many of his works are destroyed

– 1943-46 Lives in Ticino (Switzerland), where he meets Alberto Giacometti and Fritz Wotruba, among others, who encourage his artistic ambitions and greatly enrich his work

– 1944 Major exhibition at the Basel Art Museum

– 1947 Return to Milan. Resumes his teaching activities

– 1948 Meets the art dealer Curt Valentin, who offers him the opportunity of a major solo exhibition in New York and a series of further exhibitions that make the artist’s work known worldwide

– 1950 First exhibition in New York at the Buchholz Gallery. In the USA, acquaintance with Stravinsky, Beckmann, Feininger and Dalí, among others.

– 1952 Prize of the City of Venice for sculpture on the occasion of the XXVI Biennale

– 1954 Grand Prize of the Accademia dei Lincei, Rome

– 1962 Major retrospective at the Zurich Kunsthaus 1966 Major retrospective in Rome

– 1968 Marini is appointed a member of the Order Pour le mérite for Science and Art in Göttingen

– 1973 Opening of the Museo Marino Marini in Milan

– 1976 The Neue Pinakothek in Munich dedicates a permanent room to him

– 1980 Marini dies on 6 August in Viareggio