Robilant+Voena of London, Milan and St. Moritz is pleased to announce our exhibition Marino Marini: Horses, Horsemen and Female Nudes, curated by Barbara Cinelli and Flavio Fergonzi. The exhibition is curated by Barbara Cinelli and Flavio Fergonzi of the Marino Marini Foundation.
Our exhibition in London explores the main sculptural themes that the artist concentrated on for three decades (from the 1930s to the 1950s). During the 1930s, Marino Marini intentionally distilled the subjects of his sculptures, to focus only on a select few motifs that offered a rich intensity in three-dimensional form and enabled him to fully express his ideas on the validity of continuing to make figurative sculpture in the modern age.
The most important subject to Marini, and that which the sculptor analysed the most thoroughly, was the Cavallo e cavaliere (Horse and rider). Marino Marini conceived of this subject as a reinterpretation of the ancient monument, viewed through a modern lens. The exhibition will contain one of Marini's masterpieces: the plaster cast of the Gentiluomo a cavallo (Gentleman on horseback) of 1937, which the artist intended to only exhibit at the 1948 Venice Biennale.
The Gentiluomo a cavallo will serve as a prototype from which the visitor will be able to follow Marino Marini's artistic path in sculpture.
The exhibition will illustrate these periods through an exceptional series of works in both bronze and plaster. The sculptor also oscillated between the classical tradition of the nude through his Pomone (Pomona) series and, during the years he spent in Switzerland in exile, to an almost caricature-like interpretation with the deformation of the shape of the body. In this exhibition, a few of his rare nudes of the 1940s will be in dialogue with a Danzatrice (Dancer) of the 1950s: a phase in Marino's sculpture where the female body was a training ground of newfound harmony and more stylistic elegance.
