Marino Marini


(b Pistoia, 27 Feb 1901; d 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.

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