Marino Marini

Buchholz Gallery (Curt Valentin), New York

Paul Zimmerman, Hartford, Connecticut (acquired from the above in 1954 )

Private Collection, New York

William Beadleston, New York

Acquired from the above in October 1987

(possibly) New York, Buchholz Gallery, Marino Marini, 1950, no. 23, illustrated in the catalogue

Herbert Read, Patrick Waldberg and G. di San Lazzaro, The Complete Works of Marino Marini,  New York, 1970, p. 358, no. 239

Carlo Pirovano, Marino Marini scultore, Milan, 1972, no. 246

Carlo Pirovano (ed.), Marino Marini. Catalogo del Museo San Pancrazio di Florence, Milan, 1988, illustrations of another cast pp. 109-110

Carlo Pirovano, Il Museo Marino Marini a Florence, Milan, 1990, p. 77

Sam Hunter & David Finn, Marino Marini. The Sculpture, New York, 1993, illustrations and details of another cast 112-13

Marco Meneguzzo, Marino Marini. Cavalli e cavalieri, Milan, 1997, no. 42, p. 104

Fondazione Marino Marini, ed., Marino Marini, catalogue raisonné of the sculptures, Milan, 1998, no. 314b, illustration of the plaster p. 221

Excellent condition. The bronze has a dark brown patina and is structurally sound. There are traces of investment from the casting process in the in the interstices of the surface, but this is not visually disturbing. The artist's own hand-chiseling is evident and enhances the texture of the surface.
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Marini's interest in cavalieri derived from the Etruscan and classical Roman sculptures, such as the iconic equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, that he had seen as a young art student in Italy.  His first serious artistic consideration of the theme occurred during the early 1930s, after traveling to Northern Europe where he saw the eleventh century equestrian statue of Emperor Henry II in Bamberg Cathedral.   Marini's admiration for these classical examples, as well as for Degas's sculptures of racehorses, the Italian Futurist's mechanized horses, and Picasso's terrified horse in Guernica, inspired him to explore equestrian themes in his art.   Over the next several decades, Marini's horsemen became increasingly abstract, and the bodies of the horse and rider were simplified to their most elemental components.

By the 1950s, when the present work was created, Marini developed what is largely considered his most powerful representations of this figure.  Reflecting on the development of these sculptures, he wrote: "In the end, my passion for the horse represented a personal research into a kind of visual architecture.  The horse's form is the opposite of man's; the horse is horizontal, man is vertical.... However, the concept changed over the years, and at a certain point what had been serene and tranquil became agitated and expressionistic" (quoted in S. Hunter, Marino Marini, The Sculpture, New York, 1993, p. 78).

In his later years, Marini explained the evolution of the cavaliere in his art, noting how the horse and rider responded to the ever-changing tenor of world events.  "Equestrian statues have always served, through the centuries, a kind of epic purpose.  They set out to exalt a triumphant hero.... But the nature of the relationship which existed for centuries between man and the horse has changed, whether we think of the beast of burden that the ploughman leads to the drinking trough in a painting by the brothers Le Nain, or of the Percherons ridden by the horse-traders in Rosa Bonheur's famous picture, or again of the stallion that rears as it is spurred by one of the cavalry men paintings by Géricault or Delacroix.  In the past 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, ibid., p. 24).

 

The present bronze may have been the one exhibited at Curt Valentin's Buchholz Gallery in 1950, as this was the only Marini exhibition held at the gallery to feature this particular model.  If that it the case, it remained in the gallery's possession until it was sold to Paul Zimmerman in 1954.  According to the catalogue raisonné, the present bronze is one from an edition of 7, and one of 4 from that edition created during the artist's lifetime.