.jpg?w=1)
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).
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).