Marino Marini (1901-1980)
VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 1… Read more PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION, NEW YORK
Marino Marini (1901-1980)

Piccolo giocoliere

Details
Marino Marini (1901-1980)
Piccolo giocoliere
With the raised and stamped initials 'M.M' (on the base)
painted and hand chiselled bronze with golden brown patina
18¾ in. (47.6 cm.) high (excluding agate base, which measures 1 in. (2.2 cm.))
Conceived in 1954 and cast in an edition of seven
Provenance
Private collection, Switzerland.
Private collection, California.
Edwin H. and Carolyn Morris, California.
Hannover Gallery, London.
Anonymous sale, Sotheby's, New York, 14 May 1998, lot 297.
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner.
Literature
E. Trier & H. Lederer, Marino Marini, Stuttgart 1961, no. 87 (another cast illustrated, unpaged).
A. Busignani, Marino Marini, I maestri del Novecento, Florence 1968, no. 19 (another cast illustrated, unpaged, dated 1953).
A. M. Hammacher, Marino Marini Sculptures, Paintings, Drawings, London 1970, pl. 202 (another cast illustrated, unpaged, dated 1953).
H. Read, P. Waldberg and G. Di San Lazzaro, Marino Marini, Complete Works, New York 1970, no. 320 (another cast illustrated, p. 156).
C. Pirovano, Marino Marini-Scultore, Milan 1972, no. 325 (another cast illustrated, unpaged).
M. P. Garberi, Marino Marini alla Galleria d'Arte Moderna di Milano, Milan 1973, no. 26 (another cast illustrated, unpaged).
M. P. Garberi, Marino Marini, Guida al Museo-Galleria d'Arte Moderna Milano, Milan 1984, no. S.15 (another cast illustrated, p. 37).
M. Meneguzzo, Marino Marini-Il Museo alla Villa Reale di Milano, Milan, 1997, no. 27 (another cast illustrated, p. 26).
Fondazione Marino Marini (ed.), Marino Marini, Catalogue Raisonné of the Sculptures, Milan 1998, no. 397b (another cast illustrated, p. 277).
Special notice
VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 17.5% on the buyer's premium.

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Beatriz Ordovas
Beatriz Ordovas

Lot Essay

Giocoliere is a cast of one of the sculptures from a group of only nine that Marino Marini created on the theme of jugglers and acrobats. In the catalogue raisonné of Marini's works, Giovanni Carandente says of these sculptures: 'In those nine models - one could say - Marini reached the apex of his expression' (Marino Marini: Catalogue Raisonné of the Sculptures, Milan, 1998, p. 18). In them, Marini shunned the tragic theme of the rider collapsing from the horse that was his most frequent theme in favour of one filled with joy and dynamism. In Giocoliere, Marini has taken the theme of the juggler and used it as a springboard for an exploration of movement and form. He has rendered the flying balls through the stylistic shorthand of a gentle arc that deftly conveys the sense of motion and effortless action of the performer. Marini has clearly espoused this theme as one of celebration, of revelry and of fun. The elongated figure, reminiscent of the Rose Period pictures painted half a century earlier by Marini's friend Pablo Picasso, has a waif-like elegance that accentuates the agility that is encompassed both in the theme and in Marini's own exploration of it. It is a telling reflection of the sense of play expressed by this sculpture that it was formerly in the collection of Edwin H. Morris, the music publisher whose company of the same name was bought in the late 1970s by Paul McCartney and which had the rights to many of the greatest musicals on Broadway.

Writing about Marini, Patrick Waldberg linked the theme of the juggler to the artist himself:

'What with his willowy figure and a facial expression where innocence and a roguish knowingness are curiously blended, Marino himself has something of the look of a juggler in whom there might also be a little of the magician. The fierce attention a feat of jugglery demands, the strictness governing each gesture, the control needed in handling the objects kept continually in the air... a parallel comes to mind: must not the sculptor be equally attentive, must he not deploy his faculties with equal adroitness and precision in order, within such a complex whole, to isolate the chosen attitude? Slower in its cadence and sustained over a longer period of time, sculpture is also a series of connected operations in which hand and mind work in shifts and together. A superior kind of jugglery, when all is said and done' (P. Waldberg, 'Marino Marini', pp. 15-294, in H. Read, Waldberg and G. di San Lazzaro, Marino Marini, Complete Works, New York, 1970, p. 139).

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