Large-Format Color Lithography by Marino Marini, 1970s

Marino Marini
Pistoia 1901 - 1980 Viareggio
"Colorful Rider, 1975
Color lithograph
signed in pencil lower right
limited "66/75" on the lower left
sheet size: 94 x 68 cm
frame: 104 x 81 cm
catalog raisonné L 122

The Italian sculptor, painter, and graphic artist Marino Marini enrolled at the Accademia di Belli Arti in Florence in 1917. During his training, his contact with Mediterranean antiquity as well as with the international Gothic and Renaissance of the Middle Ages was an impulse. Since 1928, the artist has spent several extended periods in Paris. In 1929 Marini accepted Arturo Martini's call to the Villa Reale art school in Monza near Milan, where he was appointed to a chair of sculpture, which he held for 11 years. In the same year, the artist presents his first important terracotta sculpture "Popolo". With a major solo exhibition in Milan in 1932, participation in the Venice Biennale, the Triennale in Milan, and the Quadriennale in Rome, where he is awarded the first prize for sculpture in 1935, Marini's success in the public eye begins. In his figurative sculptures, limited to a few subjects, he strives for archaizing and abstracting the simplification of form. In 1941 the artist was awarded the chair of sculpture at the Accademia di Brera in Milan. When Marini had to flee to Ticino two years later, due to the effects of the war, he met important representatives of contemporary sculpture there: Alberto Giacometti, Fritz Wotruba, and Germaine Richier encouraged his artistic ambitions and enriched his work. After his return from Switzerland, Marini settled in Milan in 1947 and resumed his teaching activities at the Accademia. The "Angelo della Città", one of Marini's main works, is created. The following year, when the sculptor met the American art dealer Curt Valentin, the latter offered him the opportunity of a major solo exhibition in New York, as well as a series of other exhibitions that made the artist's work known worldwide. As an award of the highest prestige, Marini receives the first prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale in 1952, followed two years later by the Grand Prize of the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome. This leads to many exhibitions in various European cities and to the two major retrospectives at the Zurich Kunsthaus (1962) and the Palazzo Venezia in Rome (1966). In 1968 Marini received another honor: he was appointed a member of the Order Pour le mérite for Science and Art. In addition to a Marini Museum, which opened in Florence in 1973, the Centro di Documentatione dell'Opera di Marino Marini was dedicated to the artist in the Pistoia Town Hall, documenting the artist's life and work. The following year, on August 6, 1980, Marini died in Viareggio.