Marino Marini: a painter rediscovered in Pistoia

From 24 December 2025 to 6 April 2026, the Museo del Novecento e del Contemporaneo di Palazzo Fabroni in Pistoia, about 40 kilometres northwest of Florence, hosts Marino Marini: La pittura. The exhibition brings together a wide selection of paintings by Marino Marini, offering an overview of a part of his work that has long remained in the shadow of his sculpture.

Marini is internationally recognised as one of the key sculptors of the 20th century, particularly for his horses and riders, figures that evolved from classical balance to dramatic instability in the years after the Second World War. Less widely known, especially outside Italy, is that painting accompanied him throughout his entire career and played a central role in the development of his artistic language.

Painting and sculpture as parallel paths

Born in Pistoia in 1901, Marini trained in Florence before establishing himself in Milan and later gaining international visibility through exhibitions in Europe and the United States. From the 1920s onwards, he pursued painting and sculpture in parallel, treating them as distinct but closely connected fields of research rather than as one subordinate to the other.

The works on display, dating from the mid-1920s to the 1970s, show how ideas, themes and formal solutions move freely between the two media. Subjects such as dancers, nudes, portraits, horses and riders appear in both painting and sculpture, while similar stylistic shifts can be traced across decades. Colour, in particular, emerges as a driving force in Marini’s thinking, often anticipating developments that would later take shape in three dimensions.

Colour, gesture and expression

The exhibition includes paintings characterised by delicate, linear drawing as well as works marked by bold, energetic brushstrokes. Early figurative compositions dialogue with European anti-classical currents of the interwar period, while post-war works push colour and form towards heightened tension and expressive intensity.

Several sections are devoted to recurring cycles in Marini’s work, including horses and riders, dancers, female nudes and the so-called Cries, in which the image becomes increasingly fragmented and dramatic. Seen together, these paintings reveal a consistent exploration of balance, movement and psychological strain, themes that underpin Marini’s entire oeuvre.

Pistoia and Marini’s legacy

The exhibition is hosted on the second floor of Palazzo Fabroni, a 17th-century building in Pistoia’s historic centre that houses the city’s museum of modern and contemporary art. The choice of venue underlines Marini’s enduring connection to his birthplace, which today preserves a substantial body of his work through local public collections and the Fondazione Marino Marini.

The show offers both an introduction and a reassessment: it situates Marini within the broader history of European modern art while inviting a more nuanced reading of an artist too often reduced to his sculptural achievements alone.

Practical information

Marino Marini: La pittura, Museo del Novecento e del Contemporaneo di Palazzo Fabroni, via Sant’Andrea 18, Pistoia.

Open from 24 December 2025 to 6 April 2026.

Opening hours vary by day and holiday period; details are available on the museum’s official website.

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