1972
Lithograph (signed)
h38.5 x w49.5cm

Marino Marini (1901-1980) was one of the most important and influential Italian artists of the 20th century. He began as a painter and studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, Italy, but a few years after finishing school, he began to focus on sculpting. Marini considered the sculptor and teacher Arturo Martini to be one of his early influences. When Martini gave up his position as an art professor at the Scuola d’Arte di Villa Reale in Monza in 1929, Marini took over the post, remaining at the school from until 1940.

Marini gained inspiration and critiques of his work from some of the leading artists working in Paris at the time, including Alberto Magnelli, Giorgio de Chirico, and Massimo Campigli. He enjoyed travelling, and frequently visited Switzerland and France. He married Mercedes Pedrazzini in 1938, and, a few years later, he began working as a professor at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan. The artist lived in Milan and Switzerland for several years, but eventually considered Milan to be his home.

Three essential themes preoccupied Marini throughout his career: the female figure or ‘Pomona’, representing an archetypal mother goddess or fertility figure; the horse and rider, signifying Man and the struggle to control his animal instincts; and characters from the circus world, which express Marini’s overriding optimism and humanity’s constant search for an equilibrium between good and bad, life and death.

Created in the mid 1930s, Marini’s first equestrian works were inspired by sculptures of medieval knights on horseback and symbolise a primeval or mythical harmony between Man and Nature. In later works, made after the Second World War, the riders grow evermore desperate, and their horses increasingly nervous, articulating Marini’s increasing horror at the condition of the world.

My riders express the anxiety aroused in me by the events of my epoch. The restlessness of my horses increases with each new work; the riders become ever more impotent, losing control over the animals. Thus I seek to symbolise the last stage in the dissolution of a myth, the myth of the heroic, triumphant individual. – Marino Marini, 1970

Graphic work was a vital component of Marini’s artistic practice. Freed from the laws of three-dimensional space which govern sculpture, Marini used etching and lithography as a means to express his individual universe with unrestrained drama and vitality. The many etchings and lithographs depicting jugglers, acrobats and dancers reflect Man at his most primitive and naive. Constrained within the space they occupy, the movement of these characters creates tension and drama.

Marini died in Viareggio, Italy,  in 1980. His work was widely exhibited in his lifetime and can be found in major collections around the world. There is a museum in Florence dedicated to the artist, with more than 100 of his works on permanent display.