Marino Marini was born in 1901 in Pistoia, Italy, and was highly influenced by his Tuscan roots. Although Marini began his artistic career as a painter and printmaker, because he was so internationally celebrated as a sculptor it took a long time before he was recognized as a painter. In an interview Marini stated how the need to paint, as well as the desire to seek colour, was something he was born with. In his painting he brilliantly demonstrates this relationship to and feeling for colour. Marini’s paintings and sculptures are unique and distinct from each other, however they largely explore the same central theme, and show a mythological world populated by acrobats, dancers, studies of women and riders on their horses. As a child Marini was already fascinated by the relationship between the horse and the rider and this became a dominant subject in his artistic practice.
Today Marino Marini is above all famous for his stylized paintings of horses and for his sculptures. Marini considered the horse, with its vital energy, as a symbol for nature. In Marini’s work painting, sculpture, print and portrait all co-exist in harmony with each other. By skillfully uniting an Etruscan style with the modern, Marini’s work acquires an aura of timelessness.