To anticipate the great exhibition “Marino Marini. Visual passions”, which can be admired in Palazzo Fabroni from 16 September, the Marino Marini Foundation offers an original memory of the great sculptor through the intense images that the “Photographer of the Artists”, Aurelio Amendola, has dedicated to him.
Marino's life is documented by over 2000 images. Most of the photos were taken by the sculptor's wife, Marina, who was able to capture moments of Marino's daily life and professional activity together with snapshots of the many trips the couple have experienced together. The other images, which also include a nucleus of historical photos of the Marini family, were taken by many different photographers, among which some names that made the history of photography in the second half of the twentieth century stand out. Among the many, Herbert List, Ugo Mulas, Irving Penn and Aurelio Amendola.
The first meeting between the two dates back to 1966, on the occasion of the great Marini exhibition at Palazzo Venezia in Rome.
Two years later, the artistic partnership between sculptor and photographer was renewed in Forte dei Marmi and from that moment it continued until the very last years of Marini's life.
In 1972, those first images merged into a volume on sculpture. An iconic photo belongs to this series, it captures the sculptor with a white horse on the beach of Forte dei Marmi. Amendola wanted to include it, years later, also in the catalog of his Milanese exhibition "L'occhio indiscreto", a title that anticipates that of the film directed by Howard Franklin, inspired by the figure of the photographer Arthur Fellig, known by the name of Weegee.
And it is precisely this image that Maria Teresa Tosi, Director of the Marini Foundation, has chosen to open this retrospective. Next to it appear the master in the Milan studio or caught next to some of his works or still at the Henraux quarries while working on the large stone sculptures.
On display in the exhibition are above all shots where Marini is at work but there are others dedicated to his daily life, such as him visiting Pistoia together with his twin sister Egle and Marina.
What Palazzo del Tau proposes is actually a double exhibition. On the one hand, a documentation dedicated to the work and daily life of Marino Marini. On the other hand, a retrospective of a large page of photography, evidence of the art of a photographer, Amendola, who like few others has been able to narrate art, and sculpture in particular.
During his long career as a photographer Aurelio Amendola has dedicated himself mainly to contemporary art, immortalizing the greats of the twentieth century: Marino Marini, Burri, Manzù, Fabbri, Ceroli, Vangi, Kounellis De Chirico, Lichtenstein, Pomodoro, Schifano, Warhol, to mention just a few.
When measured against sculpture and architecture, Aurelio Amendola's lens becomes masterful.
First of all with contemporary sculpture. But also with the great masters of the Italian Renaissance: Jacopo Della Quercia, Michelangelo and Donatello.
As few have been able to do, Amendola has "reread" individual masterpieces and monuments, from the Pistoia pulpit by Giovanni Pisano, to the Della Robbia frieze of the Ospedale del Ceppo, also in Pistoia, Santa Maria della Spina and the Baptistery in Pisa to San Pietro in the Vatican .
The campaign on St. Peter's has given rise to a series dedicated to the great themes of Italian art read from the photographer's personal point of view.
His was and continues to be an ever new, original iconographic reading, calibrated on the "cut" and on the specific needs of the project, taking advantage of the rare occasion of contact without constraints with works of art and monuments.
In the case of Marini, but also of Alberto Burri, something more is triggered, the effect that is catalysed by a meeting between true artists. An energy from which images of great evocative power are born. Like those exhibited in this fascinating exhibition in Pistoia.
