Biography

Son of peasants, Quinto Martini was born in Seano on October 31, 1908. As a child he played with the earth and this is how his passion was born, starting as he himself says “to knead mud” trying to portray the bodies of men who slept lying on ‘grass and alternating work in the fields with that of dirtying the walls of the house with coal and colours, without knowing that there had ever been artists and what art was. At the age of eighteen he met Ardengo Soffici who introduced him to the Florentine artistic environment; he then attended the group of the “Scuola Leonardo” in Prato and the cabinet of Vieusseux. He obtained the chair of sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence after having taught several years in various cities including Turin, Perugia and Bologna. Quinto is a solid and stubborn man who despises any form of art that smacks of intellectualism and fashion but who loves to observe the daily life of the people who move around him. During the 1980s, the Park-Museum was created in his honour by the Municipality of Carmignano, where 36 bronze statues were placed, covering the entire span of his artistic life. He continues to sculpt and paint until his death in Florence on November 9, 1990.

Philosophy

Self-taught, he discovers the world of art when he introduces himself to Ardengo Soffici to show him four of his works: an important meeting that changes his life and opens him to the knowledge of contemporary, Italian and European art. In 1927, at the first exhibition of “Il Selvaggio”, alongside the works of Mino Maccari, Carlo Carrà, Ottone Rosai, Giorgio Morandi, Achille Lega and their Maestro, there are also the paintings of Quinto Martini. In Turin he attended Felice Casorati, Cesare Pavese and the group of the “Six” who looked at the great lesson of French painting from Mane to Cézanne. During the 19th Venice Biennale, he made his debut with “La Seanese”, in which his predisposition towards the essentiality of things emerges that will lead him to an anti-academic form of expression and, at the same time, to the choice of poor materials such as river stone and terracotta, seeking the same simplicity of results in bronze. Thus Quinto, initiated into art by Ardengo Soffici, embarks on his own path towards certain archaisms of Etruscan sculpture, while the stylistic evolution of the author is built later through the experimentation of the artistic languages ​​typical of the twentieth century, linked by a common sense of “Return to order” and thus returning to having as supreme reference the classical antiquity, the purity of the forms and the harmony in the composition.

Artwork in Castagno

La ragazza della fonte (The girl from the fountain) is the sculpture that is found in the main square of the town, with the fountain dated 1826 still in operation. For many of his works there has been talk of references to the archaisms of Etruscan and Roman sculpture, but by analysing the works exhibited in the Park dedicated to him, one can read a completely human component in his way of sculpting, in which his attachment is highlighted. to daily life and to his country of origin; This is demonstrated by some bronze sculptures including the girl who takes the goose, the host sitting waiting for the customer, the mother with the child. The subject chosen here by Quinto is the face of a girl, reminiscent of the courtly Etruscan-Roman characters on the line common to Tuscan sculpture of those years; the features are not very marked and the work has been damaged by atmospheric agents, however it is still possible to see the authoritarian expression typical of a Roman matron, that is a woman of ancient Rome married to a free Roman citizen; these women are recognisable in sculpture because they are represented with common characteristics such as beauty, harmony in forms, composure and rigidity of expression.