Conceived in 1949-50, Piccolo cavaliere forms part of Marini’s post-war body of work that solidified the artist’s fame and secured his place amid the most influential sculptors of the twentieth century.

Although Marini addressed the timeless motif of the horse and rider early on in his career, it crystallised as a major theme in his practice towards the second half of the 1930s (fig. 1). His sculptures from the 1930s and early 1940s evoke the aesthetic of classical antiquity, in particular the rougher, more energetic examples produced in Ancient Greece of the Archaic period and Etruria, with the cultural legacy of the latter rediscovered during the years of Marini’s formation as an artist.

The horrors of the Second World War and the all-encompassing disillusionment that followed dramatically affected the style of Marini’s equestrian sculptures. The increasingly angular shapes, corroded surfaces and unstable poses of Marini’s cavalieri of the late 1940s and 1950s are a response to the wave of uncertainty that engulfed the Western World as the Cold War worsened. As Sam Hunter notes, ‘The evolution from the heroic to the tragic in Marini’s art began around 1945, at the close of the war, when he was overwhelmed by the negative implications of the dawn of an era that promised the vast, perhaps total destruction of civilisation with the touch of a button’ (S. Hunter, Marino Marini. The Sculpture, New York, 1993, p. 24).

In the present work, both the rider and the horse gaze upwards, as if towards an unknown source of danger. The rider is no longer, as is the case with earlier examples, in full control of the horse, having let go of the reins. His arms are stretched out in front of him, perhaps in an attempt to regain balance; there is a dramatic combination of stasis and movement. There is a comparable example from the same year in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art (fig. 2), and both reveal Marini’s close involvement in the finish of the sculptures, including hand-chiselling and paint application. As Carlo Pirovano notes, works from the early 1950s are unique in exploring the interplay between sculpture and painting (Marino Marini. Mitografia (exhibition catalogue), Verona, 1994, p. 62).

As Marini developed the theme throughout the 1950s and the 1960s, his sculptures became more dramatic; the horse would eventually fall to the ground and the rider would be thrown back. Yet, beyond the apparent uncertainty filling these works there is hope and potential for renewal in them as well. Alberto Busignani has aptly noted that the forms and surfaces of Marini’s post-war sculptures ‘have been modified in relation to the earlier beauty precisely to the extent that pain, fear and even violence may permit a new, deeper awareness of a positive reality, which bears their wounds and scars’ (A. Busignani, Marini, London & New York, 1971, p. 29).