Marino Marini
In 1917 he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, attending the painting courses of Galileo and those of sculpture held by Domenico Trentacoste. In 1919 he went to Paris for the first time where he came into contact with the new trends in the art world. Back in Italy he begins to practice painting and engraving, binding himself to the figurative tradition of the late nineteenth century, in particular to the work of Medardo Rosso. The influence of artists can be seen in some of his early works
of the early Renaissance, in particular Piero della Francesca. He soon detaches himself from these influences, embracing the search for pure and absolute forms. Already in 1922 he decides to devote himself to sculpture and begins to participate in a series of exhibitions that will make him famous. In 1929 he decides to move to Milan which he considers the most European city in Italy. In the same year he began working for the ISIA art school in Monza, where he was assigned the chair of sculpture which he would hold until 1940.
In the early thirties he again visited Paris, where he met the greatest artists of the time: Picasso, De Chirico, Kandinskij and many others. In 1932 he exhibited both in Milan and Rome and became an honorary member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. The following years see him as the protagonist of several trips in Italy and abroad that allow him to increase his fame. After the war begins a gradual release from defined forms and an increase in his satisfaction with elegant and stylized shapes and volumes. In this sense, his friendship with the sculptor Henry Moore is significant. At the same time his notoriety grows worldwide: he exhibits in all the most important museums and receives continuous recognition throughout the fifties, sixties and sixties.
