Marino Marini was born in 1901 in a small Italian town called Pistoia, to parents who apparently really liked alliteration.

Luckily, Marini was born over 400 years after Michelangelo because for some reason, Michelangelo hated people from Pistoia and often referred to them as 'enemies of heaven.’ Harsh words, dude.

We’d like to think that Marini was a pretty heavenly guy for all that he contributed to the international art scene. From 1922 onwards Marini devoted himself to his career as an expressionist sculptor, in which he primarily focused on equestrians, nudes, and circus figures. Sometimes these themes overlapped, as is the case with his famous sculpture of a nude equestrian with a removable schlong.

Marini was happily married to a woman named Mercedes Pedrazzini. We like the name Mercedes Pedrazzini because Mercedes is a great luxury car brand and Pedrazzini is an even greater luxury boat brand, and we are fancy. By all accounts, the couple was very close and were exiled from Italy together during WWII to Mercedes’ idyllic hometown in Switzerland.
Marino Marini boasted a long and illustrious career during which he befriended numerous super-star sculptors including Alberto Giacometti, Alexander Calder, and Henry Moore. Today, his sculptures are scattered throughout museums on nearly every continent and he even scored an entire museum dedicated to his work in Florence, Italy.