Marino Marini

Mees Sikkens Lakfabricken, Sasseinheim, Holland
A.M. Mees, Noordwijk, Holland
Private Collection, Europe
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1981

Rotterdam, Museum Boymans - Van Beuningen, Marino Marini, 1955, no. 21

Marino Marini (exhibition catalogue), Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover, 1951, illustration of another cast pl. 17
Helmut Lederer & Eduard Trier, Marino Marini, Milan, 1961, no. 78, illustration of another cast
Patrick Waldberg, Herbert Read & Gualtieri di San Lazzaro, Marino Marini, Complete Works, New York, 1970, no. 279, illustration of another cast p. 365
Carlo Pirovano, Marino Marini – Scultore, Milan, 1972, no. 285, illustration of another cast
Marco Meneguzzo, Marino Marini – Cavalli e Cavalieri, Milan, 1997, no. 60-60a, illustration of another cast p. 220
Fondazione Marino Marini (ed.), Marino Marini: Catalogue Raisonné of the Sculptures, Milan, 1998, no. 359b, illustration of another cast p. 253

The present work is a striking example of Marini's horse and rider theme, whose extraordinary power and beauty lie in the careful rendering of its surface, showing the artist’s almost painterly attention to finish. Inspired like most Italian artists by antiquity, Marini was drawn not to the refinement of Hellenistic sculpture, but to the rougher, more energetic expression of the Archaic period in Greece and Etruscan sculpture in Italy. Amongst 20th century sculptors, Marini was one of the most actively involved in the finishing of his pieces before they left the foundry, often applying varying surface marks and paint to his bronzes. A stunning example of Marini's involvement in painting and hand-chiselling a sculpture, Piccolo cavaliere exhibits a striking variety of surface treatments, from smooth and polished to rough and chiselled, that invests the work with an immediacy and versatile quality rarely achieved in this medium.

A dominating theme throughout most of Marini’s career, the subject of horse and rider was rarely invested with such energy and dramatic force as in his works from the early 1950s (fig. 1). In the years before and during the Second World War, Marini executed his horses with a certain grace and poise reminiscent of the elegance of classical sculpture. In the 1950s, however, this subject was charged with an energy that would reflect the anxiety and instability of the new era. In contrast to the tranquillity of Marini’s horses of the 1940s, the present work indicates the artist’s move towards a more expressive rendering of this theme that characterised his mature work, whilst retaining the elegance of his earlier pieces. His horsemen become increasingly insecure on their mounts, flinging their arms out to break their fall, or slipping helplessly off the horse’s back. In this new approach to the classical subject of horse and rider, Marini subverts the once triumphant vision of human mastery over a magnificent animal. This reversal of the power between the two creatures reflects the man’s vulnerability and the uncertainty of the times, that had such a profound effect on the artist.

In Piccolo cavaliere the horse is planted steadfastly in the ground, with its legs firmly rooted to the four corners of the base; with an energetic backward movement of its upper body, it is throwing off the rider, who is about to fall with his hands swung up in the air. The movement of the two bodies is caught at the critical point when the equilibrium is broken, when the inevitability of the fall becomes imminent in the eyes of the rider as well as of the spectator, without the actual fall being yet materialised. The artist captures the scene at its most dramatic and climactic moment, thus making the psychological element of realisation as powerful as the physical tension. The intersecting diagonal lines of the horse and rider create a dynamic relationship between the two bodies, whilst the angular, geometric shapes that dominate the work emphasise the drama of the movement that we are witnessing.

This intensity of expression in the present work points to Picasso’s Guernica (fig. 3), which of all 20th century art had the most lasting effect on Marini. His post-war series of Riders, and the series of Warriors begun in 1956, owed much to his study of Picasso’s masterpiece. The stark, angular shapes of Marini’s figures achieve the same striking effect as Picasso’s black-and-white palette. The dramatic jolt of the horse’s body, its head and neck fully stretched, mimics the pose and expression of the horse in the centre of Guernica, lost in the chaos of the scene. But while in Guernica the rider had already fallen on the ground, in Piccolo cavaliere the two bodies are inseparable, united in a single movement. As Giovanni Carandente noted: 'The myth of the rider, of the man who derives his force and impetus from the beast that he dominates an drives, but by which he is also unsaddled, grew from year to year, brought worldwide celebrity to the sculptor, and resulted in repeated masterpieces. In some works the connection between the horse and the rider becomes almost symbiotic, as though the artist would melt the two bodies into one to represent Nessus, the mythical centaur' (G. Carandente, in Fondazione Marino Marini (ed.), op. cit., pp. 12-13).

Fig. 1, Marino Marini, Cavaliere, 1952-53, polychrome wood, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo
Fig. 2, Marino Marini’s studio
Fig. 3, Pablo Picasso, Guernica (detail), 1937, oil on canvas, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid