Marino Marini

Eduard Trier, 'Der Bildhauer Marino Marini', in Werk und Zeit, Düsseldorf, 1954, illustration of another cast p. 19
Patrick Waldberg, Herbert Read & Gualtieri di San Lazzaro, Marino Marini, Complete Works, New York, 1970, no. 284, illustration of another cast p. 366
Carlo Pirovano, Marino Marini. Scultore, Milan, 1972, no. 290, illustration of another cast
Marco Meneguzzo, Marino Marini: Cavalli e Cavalieri, Milan, 1997, no. 65, illustration of another cast p. 221
Fondazione Mario Marini (ed.), Marino Marini, Catalogue Raisonné of the Sculptures, Milan, 1998, no. 360, illustration of another cast p. 253

The dominant theme of Marini’s art, the equestrian subject underwent a number of stylistic transformations throughout the decades, from the simple, rounded forms of the early 1940s, to the highly stylised, almost abstract manner of his late works. Capturing the movement of the horse’s body in a dramatic moment, Cavallo is a magnificent example of Marini’s dynamic treatment of this theme in the 1950s. In contrast to the softer shapes that characterise the earlier sculptures, in which the animal is rendered in a more tranquil mode, often with a rider firmly seated on the horse’s back, the present work is dominated by sharper lines that represent the loss of stability and the broken equilibrium, and that invest the work with a sense of energy and primal force. With its legs firmly rooted in the four corners of the base, and the energetic upward movement of the horse’s elongated head and neck, Cavallo expresses the theme that culminated in the monumental bronze executed in the same year (fig. 1).

Discussing another Cavallo bronze from 1952, Carlo Pirovano commented: ‘In the middle of the tormented phase of his artistic career that swept away his ideals of classical equilibrium […], Marino isolated one of the protagonists of the drama, the horse (he had already done this at the end of the Thirties, with the same symbolic implications), and, for an instant he gave it the role of the solo actor in what was virtually esoteric isolation. This appears to accentuate the aura of a sacrificial object that the delicate animal assumes, especially in comparison with the violent images from which it has been isolated, and the preciosity of the decoration adds to this effect’ (C. Pirovano, in Marino Marini mitografia (exhibition catalogue), Galleria dello Scudo, Verona, 1994-95, p. 84).

This intensity of expression in the present work points to Picasso’s Guernica (fig. 2), which of all 20th century art had the most lasting effect on Marini. His post-war series of Horses and 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. In both works, the horses appear to have lost or overthrown their riders, and on their own, without a human figure that dominates them, they acquire a timeless, primal quality.

Apart from the extraordinary sense of energy, the beauty of the present work lies in the careful rendering of its surface, which shows the artist’s careful 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 20^th 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. Cavallo exhibits a variety of surface treatments, from smooth and polished to rough and hand-chiselled that invests the work with an immediacy and versatility rarely achieved in this medium.