Private Collection

L. Vitali, Marini, Quaderni d’arte n. 1, Florence, Edizioni U. 1946, tav. 58; H. Read, P. Weldberg, and G. di San Lazzaro, Marino Marini, Complete Works, New York, 1970,, c.s.n. 217; ; C. Pirovano, Marino Marini, Scultore, Milan, 1972, c.s.n. 225; C. Pirovano, Marino Marini, Milan, 1988, fig. 101 p. 114; C. Pirovano, Marino Marini, Museo San Pancrazio, Milan, Electa 1990, p. 55; Sam Hunter, Marino Marini Sculptor, New York, Abrams Inc. 1993, pp. 146-149; Marino Marini, Catalogo ragionato della scultura, ed. Valerio Terraroli, Skira, 1998, pg. 86, ill. 238B.

This Piccola Giuditta belongs to the series of elegant statues modelled on the example of classical and medieval sculpture. In this period, Marini found a renewed interest in Gothic and early 15th-century sculpture and utilised the important expressive lesson of the masters of the past for the purposes of monumental solidity and emotive power. Figures such as the present work were conceived in the tradition of antiquity but implemented with a different, modern feeling: an intelligent balance between sensuality and stylization. By experimenting with his figures’ poses, Marini aspired to the “architectonic realization of pure forms in space”, reducing the volume to its absolute essentials. A pictorial parallel of Marini’s geometrical structures can be found in Giorgio Morandi’s Still Lifes. Like Morandi, Marini thinks in pure forms solidly anchored in a balanced conception of plastic volumes and emotional tension.

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