Marino Marini Quotes (1901-1980)

“There is an intimate relationship between my pictorial [2-dimensional] and my sculptural work. I would never begin on a sculpture without first gaining an idea of the colour.. .My mind is captivated by this task until I start to put down the colour on paper and imagine that this colour will become a drawing. And then, suddenly, the drawing begins to acquire shape, the shape, and this shape becomes the real shape.”

“We must enter into the spirit of the character [for making a portrait]: here the challenge is to place this figure in the human space, to work out what he represents in relation to other people, other human personalities; when you've worked this out, you're done. this truth has to stand out in the end result of the portrait.. ..when this task is complete, and the subject is placed in the realm of the dead that go on living, I hand over my work.”

“My equestrian statues express the torment caused by the events of this century. the restlessness of my horse increases with each new work, the rider is always more exhausted, he has lost his domination of the beast and the catastrophes to which he succumbs resemble those that destroyed sodom and pompeii. I aspire to make visible the last stage of destruction of a myth, of the myth of heroic and victorious individualism, the humanists' man of virtue. my work in the last years doesn't want to be heroic, but tragic.”

“My 'Pomone' live in a bright world, with their sunny disposition, full of humanity, of abundance, and of great sensuality. they represent a happy season that breaks the tragic time of war. in all these images, femininity is enriched with all its past meanings, those most inherent, most mysterious: a sort of unavoidable necessity, of unmovable stillness, of primitive and unconscious fertility. The figure, the statue, instead demands a wider research of shapes, of lines, of bodies. My women, that some find awkward, respond to this preoccupation. In the figure, I propose to myself to deepen the way I play with volume in a togetherness that is always more united, more steady, yet also free and nimble. But this research on volume is not the only premise of the sculptor, who need not ever forget what moves most in a sculpture is always its inspiration.”