The subject of horse and rider, timeless in the annals of history, proved a central inspiration throughout much of Marini’s career. In his mature approach to this theme however, Marini injects a sense of drama and anxiety that is absent in his earlier work, reflecting a new sense of ambivalence towards the precarious post-war world order. Capturing the horse and rider just at the moment when the rider begins his inevitable fall, Cavaliere is a magnificent example of the dynamism and uncertainty that characterizes Marini’s iconic sculptures of the 1950s (see fig. 1).

Carlo Pirovano wrote of Cavaliere: "This is one of the most emotionally charged works in Marino’s oeuvre, epitomizing the tragic downfall of the rational certainties that had sustained the heroic impetus of the harmonious recreation of meanings and values. This was a dream of classical idealities that was perhaps only justified by the will to survive, or the illusion that this was possible. The tragedy is made even more harrowing by the threatening sense of danger to which this sculpture alludes. There is an evident antithesis between the protagonists with regard to their reaction to the inexorable force that is about to overwhelm them. Thus, the rider, as if he had already been burnt and were beginning to fossilize, does not attempt to defend himself and falls back like a mannequin. The horse, on the other hand, resorts to its last reserves of energy: with its powerful legs splayed to provide the greatest possible degree of stability, it becomes a sort of battering ram, the materialization of a final gesture of defiance" (quoted in Marino Marini. Mitografia (exhibition catalogue), Galleria dello Scudo, Verona, 1994, p. 78).

Rendered in a variety of mediums and most skillfully presented in his bronzes, the artist’s horses and riders underwent numerous stylistic transformations over the years. The rounded forms of the early 1940s and pre-war years exuded a certain classical grace and sense of calm which gave way in the 1950s to the more striking and energized iterations of Cavaliere. In contrast to the pronounced vertical and horizontal lines of the earlier horse and rider sculptures, in which the rider is firmly seated on the horse’s back, the present work is dominated by angular diagonals which impart a quality of instability, broken equilibrium and sense of motion.

In choosing this motif, Marini drew on a long-established tradition of equestrian painting and sculpture which pervades nearly every period of Western art history, from the cave paintings at Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc and the figurines of ancient Greece, to the triumphant renderings of 19th century rulers and the starkly modern, machine-inspired paintings of the Futurists (see figs. . Building on Eadweard Muybridge’s pioneering photographic studies of horses in motion (see fig. 2), Marini’s sculptures also stand as a testament to the creature’s elemental force and enduring ability to captivate.

As his horse and rider sculptures grew increasingly more abstract in the late 1960s and 70s, artists of divergent movements and generations were creating works with similar thematic resonance. Surrealist painters like Magritte utilized the motif as a means for pictorial exploration in works like The Blank Signature while Contemporary artists like Susan Rothenberg harnessed the raw energy of the animal in her iconic renderings. Alexander Calder's monumental stabiles from the same period reflect a similar sense of modernity embodied by the present work. With the artist's characteristic economy of line, Calder's Cheval rouge of 1974 (see fig. 3), although entirely abstract, conveys to some viewers the equestrian theme on a grand and awesome scale, similar to Marini's own imposing sculptures from the decade.

Removed from a traditional framework and the context of warfare, the artists' horses acquire a more spiritual, even mystical quality. Unified with the image of a nude rider in the present work, the image of Marini's Cavaliere becomes an eternal symbol of humanity. Held in the same family collection for generations, Marini's Cavaliere comes to the market for the first time in more than 50 years. The original plaster is now in the collection of Fondazione Marino Marini in Pistoia, while other bronze casts of this work belong to internationally renowned collections such as the Fukuoka Art Museum and The Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Gardens in New York.