‹ Collection ‘Gli artisti dello spettacolo alla Scala’ ›
Marini at La Scala
by Vittoria Crespi Morbio.
Essay by Vittoria Crespi Morbio, Primavera d’ombra /
A Spring of Shadows.
Appendices: biographical notice; catalogue of the works.
Collection «Performing Artists at La Scala».
Amici della Scala – Umberto Allemandi & C., Turin 2006.
Italian edition, pp.51.
An art exhibition at Curt Valentin’s gallery in New York, 1950: there two major figures of 20th-century culture, Igor Stravinsky (Lomonosov 1882–New York 1971) and Marino Marini (Pistoia 1902–Viareggio 1980) met for the first time. Utterly different personalities, they immediately understood each other and became friends.
Marino honoured Stravinsky several times with sculptures and drawings but above all interpreted his poetics signing the sets of the Sagra della primavera (1972) which La Scala produced right after the composer’s death. With arcane abstract signs stirred by an almost fauve violence and tragic shadows, Marino’s designs are a masterpiece commenting another masterpiece.