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Lot Essay
The elegant, 'filiform' sculptures that Marini produced during the early 1950s marked a departure for the artist. He was imbued and obsessed with a deep sense of European culture, and felt himself to be almost an heir to the development of art through the ages. Indeed, he is particularly known for his telling claim, 'I am an Etruscan'. Despite this, one of the great revelations in his work, and one which had a lasting impact on his art, was his journey to New York in 1950. There, the sheer modernity of the city, the scale of its buildings, the way in which technology seemed to dominate even the skyline added a new perspective to an artist whose work had usually borne the hallmarks of European culture. Now, a novel angularity introduced itself into his sculptures. Executed in 1951, Cavallo filiforme shows this in its verticality. The craning neck and jutting haunches create a strange paradox of a sculpture, in which the elegant sweep of the work overall is countered yet emphasised by the sharpness of the various forms. There is a sense of rawness in the modeling which recalls battered steel, while the corners are reminiscent of the shapes of some cars and other mechanised products of the period. This makes this sculpture a strange hybrid, a timeless, even ancient embodiment of the horse which appears to have been reincarnated in the visual idiom of the age of technology which itself has gradually seen the demise of the horse in everyday life.
While on the one hand recalling the sculptures of the Etruscans in its calligraphic simplicity, the back-turned head of Cavallo filiforme also seems to recall the horse at the centre of Picasso's iconic tribute to the tragedy of war, Guernica. In that painting, the horse's scream is the centrepiece, channeling the conflict of war into one animal howl. In Cavallo filiforme, Marini has taken the animal's reaction to the world, and created a universal and absorbing symbol of the existential angst that engulfed Post-War Europe.
While on the one hand recalling the sculptures of the Etruscans in its calligraphic simplicity, the back-turned head of Cavallo filiforme also seems to recall the horse at the centre of Picasso's iconic tribute to the tragedy of war, Guernica. In that painting, the horse's scream is the centrepiece, channeling the conflict of war into one animal howl. In Cavallo filiforme, Marini has taken the animal's reaction to the world, and created a universal and absorbing symbol of the existential angst that engulfed Post-War Europe.