The roots and evolution of Marino Marini’s art.

A major retrospective exhibition held in the Cannon Rooms of the Forte di Bard in the Aosta Valley from June to November 2024-the result of a prestigious collaboration between 24 ORE Cultura, Forte di Bard and the Marino Marini Museum in Florence-brought attention to Marini’s main sources of inspiration and recurring themes in his research. A selection of more than 60 works including sculptures, drawings and paintings offered an immersion in the creative journey of one of the great masters of the Italian 20th century.

The catalog accompanies the reader in discovering the roots and evolution of Marini’s art. The artist’s language developed from an interest in the archaic and the primordial and was then nourished by the cultural stimuli during the years he spent in Paris, where he met protagonists of the avant-garde including Giorgio de Chirico, Alberto Magnelli and Filippo de Pisis.

It is here that he recognized the appeal of certain themes related to the world of circus and dance, themes that had good fortune in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in art and literature. That is why in his works we find jugglers, dancers and circus characters juxtaposed with figures of horses and horsemen, warriors and ancient gods who populate a world in whicharchaic imagery merges with that of the modern.

The horseman on horseback-one of the artist’s best-known subjects, which has become a symbol through which to narrate the human condition-is the protagonist on the cover of the catalog, edited by Sergio Risaliti-art historian and critic, artistic director of the Novecento Museum in Florence, who also curated the retrospective at the Fortress of Bard.