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Lot Essay
The horse and rider are the central and most enduring motif in Marini's oeuvre. The unique and dramatic relationship between man and horse is a powerful archetype that Marini employed as a means of expressing man's existential crisis in the Post-War era. For Marini, the primeval relationship between man and Nature symbolised by the union of horse and rider had been broken in the modern era by the substitution of the machine in place of the horse. The rupturing of this ancient symbiotic union between man and animal was for Marini a powerful and enduring symbol of modern man's fall from grace and the cause of the alienation he experienced in the modern world. Executed between 1955 and 1956, Cavaliere (Composition) is a particularly expressive working of this theme, depicting the tragic moment when this sacred union is broken and man - the rider - tragically and dramatically falls from the animal's back.
"The whole history of humanity and nature lies in the figure of the horse and rider in every period." Marini recalled, "Since my childhood, I have observed these beings, man and horse, and they were for me a question mark. In the beginning there was a 'harmony' between them, but in the end, in contrast to this unity, the violent world of the machine arrives, a world which captures it in a dramatic, though no less lively and vitalising way (M. Marini quoted in G. Guastalla, Marino Marini , Pistoia 1979, pp. 29-30.) In Cavaliere (Composition) Marini has abandoned the subtle modelling of his earlier Etruscan-influenced forms in favour of the use of angular almost geometric forms and a heavy, scorched-earth-like textural surface that has seemingly been gouged out from the plaster. The strong geometry and tortured surface call to mind the cold hard, grey impersonality of the modern concrete jungle and it is this that conveys upon the ancient subject of the sculpture its sense of contemporariness. In accordance with its modern feel, Marini depicts the horse halted with its powerful head turned, as if refusing to go any further, while the rider falls helplessly and diagonally from the creature's back. It is a dramatic and seemingly tragic fall that eloquently expresses the poignant and violent moment of separation of the ancient union between man and beast, that had lasted for thousands of years.
As Marini has explained of his work in the post-war period, through his equestrian sculptures he aimed to 'express the torment caused by the events of this century. The restlessness of my horse grows with each new work', he observed, 'the rider appears increasingly worn out, he has lost his dominance over the beast and the catastrophes to which he succumbs are similar to those which destroyed Sodom and Pompeii. I hope to make the last stage of the dissolution of a myth - the myth of heroic and victorious individualism, of the Humanists' virtuous man-visible. My work from these last years is not intended to be heroic, but tragic' (M. Marini, quoted in G. Carandente, Marino Marini: Catalogue Raisonné of the Sculptures, Milan 1998, p.14).
As these comments , made towards the end of his life, clearly illustrate, Marini evidently saw man's abandoning of the world of Nature in favour of the machine as an error of apocalyptic proportion. Cavaliere (Composition) is a work of stark divisions contrasting a sturdy earthbound and strongly architectonic horse with the fragile male figure, dramatically suspended in mid-air. With its strong emphasis on the man spread-eagled and falling into the void, it is one of the most demonstrative and expressive of all Marini's post-war sculptures.
"The whole history of humanity and nature lies in the figure of the horse and rider in every period." Marini recalled, "Since my childhood, I have observed these beings, man and horse, and they were for me a question mark. In the beginning there was a 'harmony' between them, but in the end, in contrast to this unity, the violent world of the machine arrives, a world which captures it in a dramatic, though no less lively and vitalising way (M. Marini quoted in G. Guastalla, Marino Marini , Pistoia 1979, pp. 29-30.) In Cavaliere (Composition) Marini has abandoned the subtle modelling of his earlier Etruscan-influenced forms in favour of the use of angular almost geometric forms and a heavy, scorched-earth-like textural surface that has seemingly been gouged out from the plaster. The strong geometry and tortured surface call to mind the cold hard, grey impersonality of the modern concrete jungle and it is this that conveys upon the ancient subject of the sculpture its sense of contemporariness. In accordance with its modern feel, Marini depicts the horse halted with its powerful head turned, as if refusing to go any further, while the rider falls helplessly and diagonally from the creature's back. It is a dramatic and seemingly tragic fall that eloquently expresses the poignant and violent moment of separation of the ancient union between man and beast, that had lasted for thousands of years.
As Marini has explained of his work in the post-war period, through his equestrian sculptures he aimed to 'express the torment caused by the events of this century. The restlessness of my horse grows with each new work', he observed, 'the rider appears increasingly worn out, he has lost his dominance over the beast and the catastrophes to which he succumbs are similar to those which destroyed Sodom and Pompeii. I hope to make the last stage of the dissolution of a myth - the myth of heroic and victorious individualism, of the Humanists' virtuous man-visible. My work from these last years is not intended to be heroic, but tragic' (M. Marini, quoted in G. Carandente, Marino Marini: Catalogue Raisonné of the Sculptures, Milan 1998, p.14).
As these comments , made towards the end of his life, clearly illustrate, Marini evidently saw man's abandoning of the world of Nature in favour of the machine as an error of apocalyptic proportion. Cavaliere (Composition) is a work of stark divisions contrasting a sturdy earthbound and strongly architectonic horse with the fragile male figure, dramatically suspended in mid-air. With its strong emphasis on the man spread-eagled and falling into the void, it is one of the most demonstrative and expressive of all Marini's post-war sculptures.