L'Angelo della Città
L'Angelo della Città ( German The Angel of the City ) is the title of a bronze sculpture by the Italian artist Marino Marini (1901–1980) from 1948. The sculpture is located in front of the entrance to the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the waterfront of the Grand Canal in Venice . She became famous with the public through the memoirs of her owner Peggy Guggenheim (1898–1979), whose art collection has been accessible in the Palazzo since 1980 as the Peggy Guggenheim Collection .
description
A rounded figure, except for the suggestion of the chest line and rib arch in the body shape, sits on a horse that stands motionless on its four legs and stretches its head straight ahead with its ears wide and its mouth open. The horse's tail, consisting of a stub, protrudes from the rear part of the neck analogously. The rider has spread his arms sideways; He keeps legs and feet stretched and spread apart from the horse's trunk. The spherical head without a neck is placed back, the indicated nose points to the sky. Its phallus rises in the middle of the body .
classification
Marino Marini has dealt with the subject of horses and riders since 1936. The first figures showed comparatively narrow, slender proportions and were in calm, balanced positions. From 1937 Marini changed the subject and showed the prancing horse and the gesticulating rider. From 1940 the forms became increasingly simplified and archaic, with the result of the Angel of the City , who - according to Thomas M. Messer, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation , 1983 - exhibits the characteristic features of Marini's work from this period: the expression of desire and the sexual strength accompanying its demanding strength . In the 1950s, Marini showed horses and riders falling in different variations and thus, according to the interpreter Messer, created an apocalyptic image of loss of control that was characterized by fear of the future .
Purchase and first presentation
Peggy Guggenheim acquired the Angelo della Città in 1949 in Marino Marini's studio in Milan . The artist had a cast made for her. She had the bronze sculpture set up in the courtyard of the Palazzo she had just acquired for herself and her art collection on the Grand Canal in Venice. In autumn of that year she showed the Angelo as part of an exhibition of modern sculpture, in which in the garden of her palazzo, in addition to some loans, mainly works from her collection by Hans Arp , Constantin Brâncuși , Alexander Calder , Alberto Giacometti , Jacques Lipchitz , Henry Moore , Antoine Pevsner and David Hare were seen.
reception
The sculpture became popular through its description in Guggenheim's memoirs. Peggy Guggenheim reports that Marini had the phallus cast as an individual part that could be "screwed on and unscrewed" "at will". She secretly looked out the window to observe the reactions of visitors. On public holidays, when the nuns used to drive by in a motorboat on the Grand Canal in the direction of Santa Maria della Salute , they unscrewed the piece, as was usually the case with "particularly narrow-minded visitors". Guggenheim also tells of the rumor that quickly spread in Venice that she had various phalluses in various sizes that could be screwed on and unscrewed and put them on display "as needed and when the occasion came". Since the opening of Peggy Guggenheim's art collection to the public in 1980, visitors to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice occasionally check the mobility of the firmly welded bronze body part to this day.
In her memoirs Peggy Guggenheim called the sculpture "the Angel of the Citadel" (Angel of the Citadel) ; Under this title, Marini's work appeared in the official catalog of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1983 and is occasionally listed in English-language literature. An angel of the city , angelo della città , is a metaphor for the inspiration or protection of a place, represented by the individuals who inhabit it. Guggenheim associated with it, the Citadel , English: citadel , in a phonetic reversal of the Italian title della città . In 2006, the Getty Trust recorded a third cast of the work in its collection, alongside the titles Angel of the Citadel and Town's Guardian Angel : Horse and Rider . However, the sculpture of the Getty lacks the phallus.
literature
- Peggy Guggenheim: Palazzo Venier dei Leoni . In: dies .: I've lived everything. The memoirs of the “femme fatale” of art . (Original: Peggy Guggenheim: Out of this Century - Confessions of an Art Addict , 1946/1960/1979) Munich 9th edition 1995; Pp. 309-329
- Thomas M. Messer (Ed.): The Peggy Guggenheim Collection . The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York 1983; Catalog No. 100, pp. 208-209
Web links
- Official website of the museum (English and Italian)
- Marino Marini: Horse-and-Rider Figures and Graphics
Individual evidence
- ↑ Thomas M. Messer (Ed.): The Peggy Guggenheim Collection (1983), p. 208
- ↑ Peggy Guggenheim: I've lived everything . (1995), p. 310; 311
- ↑ Peggy Guggenheim: I've lived everything . (1995), p. 311
- ↑ Peggys Angle (2006), with obviously edited photos and misleading text (accessed July 2, 2010)
- ↑ The J. Paul Getty trust report 2006, page 42 (accessed on 2 July 2010; PDF file, 2.47 MB); Fig.
Coordinates: 45 ° 25 ′ 50 ″ N , 12 ° 19 ′ 53 ″ E