Marino Marini

The Weintraub Gallery, New York (acquired directly from the artist and sold: Sotheby's, New York, May 14, 1998, lot 309)
Acquired at the above sale

Lorenzo Papi, Marino Marini Paintings, Turin, 1987, no. 308, illustrated p. 156

Executed on paper laid down on canvas. Surface shows a rich impasto throughout. Slight undulation in sheet in lower right corner. Some minor rubbing to the surface along extreme right edge. Under UV light, no inpainting is apparent. Work is in excellent condition.
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Cavallo e cavaliere presents Marini's favored subject of horse and rider as both heroic and solemn. This elemental theme in Marini's oeuvre has come to be understood as representing the union of man and nature, and more broadly as the subversion of the equestrian portrait as a heroic myth of the glories of war and the anachronism of this image in the modern age. Late in his life Marini explained this growing myth: "In the last fifty years, this ancient relationship between man and beast has been entirely transformed. The horse has been replaced, in its economic and military functions, by the machine, the tractor, the automobile or the tank. It has become a prime symbol of sport or of decadent luxury, and, in the minds of most of our contemporaries, it is rapidly becoming a kind of lost myth" (quoted in Sam Hunter, Marino Marini, The Sculpture, New York, 1993, p. 24).

Part of the complexity and allure of this composition derives from the vivid layers of coloration and varied surface texture Marini paints around the figures. Franco Russoli writes that, "When painted, the figure, so isolated in sculpture, becomes part of a chorus or spectacle and seems multiplied in a combination of contrasts and contrapuntal accents. Even when restricted to a single figure which repeats or anticipates an analogous statue, it is arranged differently in the field of vision; the color placing it within a well-defined space and giving it a precise environment that may be either realistic or fantastic" (Franco Russoli, Marino Marini: Paintings and Drawings, Milan 1964, p. 64).