Marino Marini

Maurice Goldman, Califonia
Sale: Christie's, London, November 28, 1994, lot 38
Galleria dello Scudo, Verona
Cecchi Collection, Forte dei Marmi, Italy
Private Collection, Italy (acquired from the above in the late 1990s and sold: Sotheby's, London, June 25, 2014, lot 445)
Acquired at the above sale

Umbro Apollonio, Marino Marini, Milan, 1958, nos. 112-13, illustrations of another cast n.p.
Eduard Trier & Helmut Lederer, Marino Marini, Stuttgart, 1961, nos. 100-03, illustrations of another cast n.p.
Mostra di Marino Marini (exhibition catalogue), Palazzo Venezia, Rome, 1966, no. 66, illustration of another cast n.p.
Herbert Read, Patrick Waldberg & Gualtieri di San Lazzaro, Marini, Complete Works, New York, 1970, no. 298, illustration of another cast n.p.
Abraham Marie Hammacher, Marino Marini Sculpture, Milan, 1980, no. 304, illustration of another cast n.p.
Marino Marini (exhibition catalogue), Mannheim, Kunsthalle Mannheim, 1984, no. 135, illustration of another cast
Fondazione Marino Marini, ed., Marino Marini, Catalogue Raisonné of the Sculpture, Milan, 1998, no. 374b, illustration of the plaster version p. 261

Attractive dark brown patina with faint golden highlights. Some very minor spots of oxidization. Otherwise good condition.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

When Marini presents a dancer, he “stresses not so much the movement itself as the tension which renders it possible. The dance is shown to us, not in repose, for such a thing does not exist in the sphere of dance, but in a state of suspense, that that instant of straining stillness where action either emerges or else expires” (Herbert Read, Patrick Waldberg & Gualtieri di San Lazzaro, op. cit., p. 134). Marini’s greatest success in these figures is the economy of means he employs to convey their states of transition. Rather than define the musculature of his dancers, Marini utilizes subtle curves to create the greatest tension—the foot poised vertically to its tip, arms that shoot out from the sides with sharp lines delineating the angled joints, and the slight curve of the neck and back to suggest the effort fundamental to the dancer’s movement.

Figures such as the present work were conceived in the tradition of antiquity and tempered by the influence of fellow artists Aristide Maillol and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. In his own words, Marini deviated from these colleagues by endowing his works with “a classical quality of anonymity. I have tried to express in them no personal sensuality of my own. I wanted to exclude from them the autobiographical element that allows us to recognize, in sculptures of Renoir or even Maillol, the artist’s own mistress or at least a particular contemporary type of feminine beauty that appealed to the sculpture more immediately than an eternal type of classical beauty” (quoted in Sam Hunter, Marino Marini, The Sculptor, New York, 1993, p. 171).

The year prior to the conception of this sculpture Marini won Grand Prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale, confirming and accelerating his international renown. Two examples of this model are in the Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo, and the Hans C. Bechtler Collection, Zurich. The polychrome plaster is in the Fondazione Marino Marini, Pistoia.