MARINO DI TEANA
Monumental sculpture, Architecture, Painting, Urbanism :
A conceptual continuity
Art critics
“Actually, Marino di teana’s whole body of work is a vast architectural proposal. In his atelier, one can see steel friezes just waiting for installation, a high-rise with glass slabs, fountain mock-ups, proposals for stained glass walls lighted on both sides That atelier contains enough to build a whole city of steel with glistening transparent colours.”
Michel RAGON
“Marino Di Teana’s sculpture is based on the principle that since our fashion is ever more open, sculpture cannot continue to have the appearance of a block. Many other sculptures have used the same premise as their point of departure, and have opened up their sculptures by making holes in them. Marino Di Teana on his part separates them from the mass, creating a living space inside the sculpture, creating dialogues between the empty spaces and the full ones.”
“From the smallest of his sculptures – always designed as an original plastic proposal – to the monumental realisation in situ of certain works linking up, by necessity, with the very principle of architecture, Marino Di Teana’s only aim is to balance the forms that he creates around the spatiality of the vacuum intuitively perceived as active. Even if, by continuing part of the modern tradition in this way, he works the metal that he welds, this is (unlike what happens with his peers, Chillida, David Smith or Anthony Caro) without any expressionist desire, and for the sole purpose of contrasting with Nature, which he respects above all, a rational orthogonality distinct from the organic forms, but both profoundly human and gratuitous”.
Dominique Le Buhan. (Artcurial)
“You will note that the majority of the sculptures bear the name “Structure”. That again proves that the concern with penetration of space is omnipresent. One should not be surprised, he says, if, in a sculpture, the living space separating two parallel forms is so large. The point is that in fact it does not separate them. On the contrary: it’s the link between those forms. They experience that perpetual tension attracting them toward each other… Always, whatever the scale may be, from the small, fragile and poetic works to the ever more powerful and viral monuments, rigor dominates. The emotion rises from the tension between the full spaces and the empty ones, from the skilful proportions leading to harmony”.
Marcel Joray ( Griffon editions President – Switzerland)
“Marino Di Teana remains faithful to that fine and long tradition. In that sense he is a sublime blacksmith of the art of his time”.
Marc Gaillard
Marino Di Teana as seen by Jean-Pierre Arnaud President of Présence de l’Art Contemporain, Angers
For Marino Di Teana, everything seem to come naturally as of his early childhood. We are in Italy, a country of artists if there ever was one. And in Lucania, a territory a bit lost in the South. Shepherds and masons there kept contact with a Nature that they respect, while continuing to shape it lovingly. Between carrying on the ancestral work and creation, the division is not so sharp that a mind with some degree of alertness can’t regularly make the transition. That was the case with the young Francesco Marino. The Roman tile roofs, the streets, the trees, the haystacks and the undulation of the mountains toward infinity awaken in him a feeling for volumes, rhythm, measure, giving a meaning to space and humanising it.
He is sixteen years old in 1936 when he expatriates himself to Argentina, to rejoin his father, who had already left to work in that country. To him, as to many other Italians from the South, foreign parts are a second homeland! Since the age of seven, he has been used to working on masons’ scaffolding, and he will be a mason in Buenos Aires. Soon becoming a job site manager, at the same time he takes courses at the Industrial Polytechnical School and initiates himself by reading books on the history of art. Admitted in 1945 to the Higher School of Fine Arts of Buenos Aires, he leaves it with a brilliant record four years later as a “higher professor”, receives the prestigious Mitre prize, and wins six more prizes one after another.
In 1952 he returns to Europe: “For me, Europe was the way of finally seeing the arts of the past in their proper surroundings”. After a trip through Spain, where he discovers Medieval art, he settles in Paris in 1953. His first Paris exhibition is held the following year. Living in a corner of the Mills factory in Pantin, in 1955 he begins working with metal. Michel Ragon, who witnessed this change of course tells us: “He saws cylinders in two or makes curves with a hammer. Certain steel plates that he uses are up to four centimetres thick. Marino Di Teana likes the power of the material, and his sculptures are always animated by a strong impetus”.
From 1956, when he enters the Denise René Gallery, to 1975-76, when he is honoured by an important roving retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art of the city of Paris, there is a succession of exhibitions, catalogues, orders and prizes. He wins the Saint-Gobain first prize in 1962, and receives, from Willy Brandt, the silver medal at the International Congress of Architecture in Bochum (a prize shared with Le Corbusier).
Marino Di Teana’s manner and working spirit then find their complete expression. A robust material, steel or concrete, dynamic space stylisation, without expressionism, the test for utopian projection as manifested in a very large number of mock-ups of buildings or “imaginary cities”. One of his 1972 sculptures is called “Structure de cité à venir” (Structure of a future city). His humanism tempers the apparent coldness of the forms.
Two sculptures created in homage to musicians, Bach and Cimarosa, date from that time. The spirit of music is never very far removed from his compositions, always rigorously organised on the basis of a dynamic vacuum, as music itself continuously plays with silence. His own notes are those few elementary forms that he borrows from Nature and architecture: planes, curves, disks, bars, cylinders. He uses them to build sequences, volumes of varying degree of complexity but always aimed at proposing a proper and harmonious balance between people and their environment.
Some fine exhibitions and activity seething with ideas and new experimentation characterise the last three decades. The tireless Marino Di Teana works with formidable masses of steel, animating new retrospectives and struggling for a practice that would be richer and more open to the spiritual and to the imagination of architecture and town planning. His teaching during a quarter of a century at the American International School of Fontainebleau and the series of lectures given in 1997 in Seoul (where he was applauded by his architecture peers), not to mention the ones that he gave at Harvard and in South America, make this “grand métèque” (métèque” meaning any dark skin foreigner living in France), as he calls himself, one of the best ambassadors on the international cultural scene.
On the picture rails in his atelier in Perigny-sur-Yerres (which he built himself), a visitor can see a continuous series hanging there of photographs of mock-ups of those “cities of the future” that he imagined in the 1960s, staged against a background of an animated sky of moving clouds. Thanks to the photographic montages made by the artist, they dominate, from the guardrail of the upper gallery, the gigantic terracing of the metal sculptures and constitute a perfect rendering, by contrasting complementarity, of the aerial and poetic dimension of Marino Di Teana’s work.
Jean-Pierre Arnaud.
Acquisitions in National Collections & Museums
Museum of Cholet. – 1980.
Museum of “beaux arts”, Pau – 1987
Museum of Monbéliard, Doubs. – 1980.
Museum of Assistance Publique, Paris – 1975.
Museum Art and Industie in Saint-Etienne – 1968.
Museum Modern Art of Saint Etienne
Museum of the New Academy of Musics of Lyon. – 1989.
Modern Art Museum of Paris MAMVP – 1970 et 1975
.FRAC (Regional Funds of Contemporay Art) :
.FRAC Oise – 1983.
.FRAC Ile de France – 1984.
.FRAC Centre 2004
FNAC (National Funds of contemporary Art) :
Cultur Ministery, Defence Ministery, Evreux National Museum, Fnac Paris La Defense
purchases in 1964, 1968, 1981, 1987.
Museum “Plein Air” of the Contemporary Sculpture, on the qays of the Seine, Ville de Paris – 1983
Art contemporary center Raymond Farbos, Mont de Marsan.
Art Collection of Francois Pinault, L’Oréal, Sonia Delaunay, …
Museum contemporary art of Val de Marne (MAC/VAL), www.macval.fr France. (find on di teana)
(Drawing & maps of thee highest sculpture of Fontenay sous bois)
Centre Pompidou – National Museum of Modern Art, Paris – 2000.
www.cnac-gp.fr (find on di teana)
Museum of Cambrai, by the EM Fruhtrunk donation.
Musée des Ursulines, Mâcon, © Direction des musées de France (2004)
Culture and communication Ministery, rue Berryer Paris.
The bank Société Générale’s contemporary art collection, in the Valmy towers of Paris La Défense. 1996.
Italy
Civic museum of Padova – 1977.
City of Chiaromonte, Lucania – 1985.
Pinacoteca di Bari La Paglia – 1994.
MUSMA – City of Matera – 2003.
Conseil Régional de la Basilicata, Pallazo de la Regione, Potenza – 2007.
Belgium
ULB – Brussels administrative center,
Acquisition by the museum of Ixelles.
Collection Thomas Neirynck, Maison Bernheim in the Foundation Roi Baudouin.
Switzerland
National museum of Neuchâtel – 1992.
Museum of Beaux Arts de la Chaux de Fond.
City of Neuchâtel, Homage to Marcel Joray – 1997.
Germany
Museum of the city of Münster – 1977
Saarlandmuseum Saarbrücken,
Make-ups of the architectural cities -1982, outside sculpture -1987.
Collection Giebels galery Saarlouis.
Danemark
Kunstmuseum of Aarhus -1968.
USA
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LACMA California- 1968
JAPON
“Satoru Sato Contemporary Art Museum” City of TOME
Collection concrete art and modern art – 2007.
ARGENTINA
Fundación Banco de la Nacion Argentina, Homage to Lao Tseu en Inox – 1981.
| Biographical |
Born on 8th August 1920, in Teana, in Basilicat Province, near Potenza in South Italy.At age 16, emigrated to Argentina as a mason. At age 22, became a construction site manager.
At the same time, he studied in the evening at the Salguero Polytechnic at the Architectural National School.
Entered the Higher National School of Fine Arts Ernesto de la Carcova in Buenos Aires via an entrance competition.
Graduated with the title of Higher Professor and obtained a professorship at that school.
Won the Premio Mittre, equivalent to the European Grand Prix de Rome.
Returned to Europe in 1952, settling in Paris. In 1956, his works are exhibited in the Denise René gallery.Beginning with 1960, Denise René organizes several exhibitions of di Teana’s works.
Since that time, he participates in numerous presentations of contemporary art in France and abroad. His oeuvre is shown at many museums like Ixelles in Belgium, Leverkusen, Frankfurt, Munster, Copenhagen, Tome in Japan, …
He was present in the Stendhal gallery in Milan, Redfern Gallery in London, Claude Bernard and Artcurial in Paris
Now represented by the Gallery Michèle Broutta in Paris and the Krings Ernst Gallery in Koln Germany, punctually by Dutko or Lahumière gallery in Paris, or Galerie Jonas in Switserland.
In the 70s begins a series of comprehensive retrospective exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the City of Paris in 1976, Museum in Pau in 1981, National Saarland Museum, Saarbrücken in 1987, among others.
He represents Argentina at the Biennale of Venice in 1982, and France at the International Symposium of the Arts and the Sciences of Seoul ( Korea) in 1997..
His works are acquired for public collections: the Museum of Contemporary Art of the City of Paris, the George Pompidou Center, National Contemporary Art Museum, The New Contemporary Art Museum MACVAL, several French FRACs (National Contemporary Art Fund) as well as for renown private collections such as the L’OREAL company, Claude Pompidou, Francois PINAULT or PIERRE BERGÉ collections, The Marcel Joray collection in Switzerland, The Thomas Neirynck donation at the King Baudouin Fundation in Belgium.
Di Teana realizes winning projects for public commission: more than 50 monumental sculptures as much as 20 m high (Paris/Fontenay sous Bois, Montpelier, Orléans-Chevilly, the military Canjuers head quarters, Var).
The sculpture “Liberté, Hommage to the General de Gaulle” in Fontenay is one of the largest sculptures of Europe. (23 meters High in Corten Steel)
Numerous prizes including:
– The First Prize of Saint Gobain awarded by a jury comprising Zadkine, Michel Seuphor and Alberto Giacometti.
– the Honorary Diploma of the 14th Triennial in Milan, Italy
– Silver Medal at the International Congress of Architecture, awarded by Willy Brandt, in Bochum, Germany.
– Two gold medals awarded by the Provincia di Basilicata and Teana – the artist’s native village in Italy.
– Appointment a member of the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture of Argentina (Buenos Aires).
– Medal of Recognition from the University of Seoul, South Korea.
– Silver Medal from the General Council of the Val-de-Marne Department in France
– Grand Silver Medal awarded by the French Academy of Architecture for the body of his work.
– Honorary medal at the 16th Sculpture International Triennal of Poznan, Poland
– Appointed Citoyen d’Honneur by the region of Basilicata, Italy
– Appointed Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.
Since 1980, di Teana has been a professor at the University of Art and Architecture in Fontainebleau, USA.
Lives and works in his atelier in Périgny sur Yerres – France
________________________
Principal monographs:
Marino di Teana by Jean Clay, Editions du Griffon. Neuchâtel, Switzerland (1967: English, French and German editions).
Plastiken, Gemälde und Architeckturmodelle, published by the Saarbrücken Museum
Marino di Teana by Thomas Alva Negri, Ediciones de Arte Gaglianone, Buenos Aires
L’espace vif de Marino di Teana, by Dominique Lebuhan, éditions Artcurial
Marino di Teana in the Petit Livre Bleu series, by Dora Vallier, Edition Artcurial.
Marino di Teana, sculptures and drawings, by Maurice Allemand
Marino di Teana, lo spazio plamatico, by Giovanni Percoco, published by the General Council of Basilicata. Italy.
Marino di Teana, alla ricerca di se stesso (in search of himself), by Giovanni Percoco, Edition amministrazione comunale
L’espacement géométrique infini (infinite geometrical spacing), by Dominique Lebuhan, éditions Artcurial Paris
Born in 1920 in Teana, a small village in southern Italy. In 1936, his grandfather saved him from compulsory enlistments to go to war in Russia, sending him to Argentina. Engaged as a bricklayer, he made the evening classes returned to competition at the National School of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires.At the end of his studies, he obtained the Premio Miter, equivalent to the Prix de Rome, as well as the title of professor superior. But Marino di Teana prefers to return to Europe.
Art, it is the city. The city is art.”
“Art and architecture are indissociable.”
“Art has a meaning”
“a table, a fresco, enriches the house and its architecture. The sculpture which belongs to a significant unit, which enriches the city and its architecture. When one looks of the Louvre to the triumphal arch, it is the avenue, the place, the sculptures and the monuments located at the neuralgic places which gives the artistic and significant value to this unit. If one shifts the sculpture Horses’s Carroussel out of the prospect, they lose their beauty. They remain a body without heart.”
“art is not simply a blow of brush on a table,
nor a curio on a piano”.
1959
– Persan Beaumont (Oise). Frieze made of stainless steel and coloured glass.
Length 4m. Created for Filage Curty company.
1962
– 1st Prize in the Saint Gobain competition. Stainless structure. Length 13m
1963
– Chantereine (Oise). Frieze made of Saint Gobain glass. 8 x 2m.
Created for the laboratories of the Saint Gobain glass factory in Chantereine.
– Contemporary art exhibition at the grand palais in Paris, under the aegis of André Malraux, minister of culture :
Set of 8 luminous Fountains, coloured lighting with 4 periods.
Material : 600 doors made of St Gobain Clarit glass. Each fountain 9m high.
Produced in connection with the foire de Paris (Paris fair).
1964
– 1st Prize in the International competition of Leverkusen, Germany. Stainless steel structure 5m high.
– Decor on the theme of sculpture, created in Montreal for choreography by Janot Lebecque
with music by Pierre Boulez
1965
– Chapel at Garde Freinet ( Var). Improvement and renovation of the chapel.
Production of all of the stained glass representing the Way of the Cross.
– Carpentras. Stainless steel sculpture for the Collège Technique, 4m x 8m (“1%” state order)
– Choisy Le Roi. 2 stainless steel sculptures 2m high for the “Residence” building groups.
1966
– Paris la Défense. Steel sculpture in the lobby of high-rise CB15. 120 x 190 x 40cm
(commissioned by Pétroles d’Aquitaine)
1967
– Chevilly – Orléans. Steel structure 17m high. Created for GEEP Industrie.
– 1967-1972 Montpellier Cor-Ten steel structure for LTE Jean Mermoz, 17,00 m hig – All the pictures
1968
– Gournay en Brie (Seine maritime). Concrete structure for the CES 5m high
– Mulhouse. Steel structure for the ENET 10 m high (“1%” state commission)
– Thann (haut Rhin). Steel sculpture for the CETI – University of Mulhouse, 2m x 4m (“1%”)
1969
– Reims, LET. Structure en acier corten de 2m x 4m x 6m (“1%”)
1970
– BFCE Paris boulevard Haussman. Complete realisation of the entrance lobby: space, furniture, stainless steel sculpture 4m high.
– Ivry sur Seine. Carbon steel structure for the CES, 2.3m x 2.3m (“1%”)
– Reims. Stainless steel sculpture for the CES of quartier de l’ Europe, 4m high. (“1%”)
1971
– Grenoble. Carbon steel sculpture for the CES Ampère, 210cm x 275cm x 275cm. (“1%”)
1972
– Farebersviller (Moselle). Cor-Ten steel structure for the lycée technique d’état, 2.5m x 4m. (“1%”)
– Herblay (Val d’Oise). Black-painted steel sculpture for CES Jean Villar, 4m x 6m. (“1%”)
1973
– Camp militaire de Canjuers (Var). Cor-Ten structure from mat to colours, High 20m. State commission.
– Embassy of France in Brasilia. 2 tapestries commissioned by the State and woven in the Goubely atelier, in Aubusson.
Blue composition and grey composition 4 x 2.5m.
– Colombes. Cor-Ten steel sculpture for the Louis Mourier hospital, 4m x 6m.
– Briare (Loiret). Cor-Ten steel sculpture for the CET, 2.7m x 2.2m x 1.6m. (“1%”)
– Vitry sur Seine – sculpture en acier corten, 1973 lycee technique Jean-Mace, rue Jules-Ferry
1974
– Angoulême. Cor-Ten steel sculpture for the CET Charles-Augustin Coulomb school. high 2.7m (“1%”)
– Paris Porte de Clignancourt. Groupe Scolaire Maurice Utrillo. Cor-Ten sculpture, 4m x 4m x 3m. (“1%”)
– Paris boulevard Kellermann, Garde Républicaine. Cor-Ten steel structure called “Navire Spatial” (Spaceship) 6 x 7m. State commission.
– St Léonard (Eure & Loire) Cor-Ten steel sculpture for a private estate, 3 x 5m.
1975
– Palaiseau, Nouvelle Ecole Polytechnique. Cor-Ten steel structure, 7,5 x 4 x 4m. State commission.
– Montferrand, Haute Garonne. Cor-Ten steel sculpture for Lycée A. Brugière, 1 x 2.5 x 6m. (“1%”)
– Pierrelate, Drome. Cor-Ten steel sculpture for the Lycée Technique, 1.9 x 1.7 x 4m (“1%”)
– Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Homage to the United States of the world (Oak Sculpture)
1976
– Bourg St Andéol. White cement sculpture for the CES, 2m x 4m (“1%” State commission)
1977
– Mulhouse. Cor-Ten steel sculpture for EME 10 meters high (“1%”)
– Münster, Germany. Cor-Ten steel sculpture. Purchased by the city for the Pascal Gymnasium. 1.5 x 1.4 x 2.9m
1978
– Nancy, Faculté de Médecine. Cor-Ten steel sculpture “Homage to the sciences”, 9.5m.
– Paris, CHU Villemin – Lariboisière. Cor-Ten sculpture, 1 x 2 x 2.7m. (“1%”)
– Paris 74014, Ecole maternelle 3bis rue d’Alesia. Cor-Ten steel sculpture, 1.1 x 2 x 2.6m. (“1%”)
1979
– Münchengladbach, Ruhr, Germany. 1st prize in the city competition. Steel sculpture for the high school, 4 x 5 x 10m.
– Clermond Ferrand. Ecole de la gendarmerie nationale. “liberty” sculpture made of carbon steel (date to be verified)
1980
– Falck, Moselle. Cor-Ten steel sculpture for the CES, 1.7 x 1.9m. (“1%”)
– L’OREAL factory. Cor-Ten steel sculpture (date to be verified)
1981
– Université de Reims. Cor-Ten steel sculpture, 4.5 x 4.6 x 10m. (“1%”)
– Clermont Ferrand. Cor-Ten steel sculpture, 10m long. (date to be verified)
1982
– Le Havre. “eclipse ” Cor-Ten steel sculpture for the SCIC group d’ HLM (public housing). 1.6 x 4 x 4.5m
– Troyes. Cor-Ten steel structure (“1%”)( date to be verified)
1983 – Paris, Musée du plein air, quai St Bernard. Cor-Ten steel structure, 2m.
1986 – Finanzbauamt Saarbrücken, Germany. Cor-Ten steel structure called “navire dans l’espace” for the ministry of finance.
1st prize in the city competition
1987 – Museum of Modern Art of Saarbrücken. Saarland Museum. Cor-Ten steel structure. 2.5 x 1.5 x 2.4 m
1989-1991 – Fontenay sous bois, place Charles de Gaulle. Cor-Ten steel structure “Liberty” 21m high.
City budget. The drawings are on display at the Val de Marne Museum (MAC/VAL) in Ivry.
1993 – Neuchatel, Switzerland. Cor-Ten steel sculpture.
1994 – Sucy en Brie, Val de Marne. “Aube” (dawn), made of Cor-Ten steel, height: 3m
1997 – Fontainebleau – European School of Management : CEDEP school created by L’OREAL
2008 – Teana South Italy – four monumental sculptures realised in tribute to Marino di Teana, ordered by region Basilicata
2010 – in progress : the highest monumental sculpture – 25 meters high plans designed by Di Teana
