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Lot Essay
In 1519, when the Aztec people first saw the mounted riders of Hernan Cortez's small army, they believed the horse and rider to be one single strange double-headed creature. The unique bond that exists between a horse and its rider had materialised itself in their eyes into a living centaur. This archetypal and somewhat mystic union between man and horse forms the central and most common theme of Marini's sculpture of the immediate post-war period and was used by him to evoke a powerful sense of ancient wisdom permeating the modern age of spiritual uncertainty. Piccolo cavaliere (Little Rider) is a highly expressive and emotionally charged work executed in 1948, that celebrates the mystery of this union by invoking the power of its raw primitivism and erotic energy.
Marini once observed that the most powerful source for his horse-and-rider image was that of the homeless crowds of people fleeing Milan on horseback before the advancement of the Allied armies at the end of the Second World War. Evidently, the timeless image of the horse and rider impressed itself on Marini as a dramatic and poignant contrast to the collective anonymity and impersonality of a modern mechanised army on the march. In addition, the fact that in their panic and despair, people resorted to this more ancient but more personal, practical and animistic form of transport would also have impressed an artist who considered Etruscan and Egyptian art superior to the more derivative arts of Ancient Rome, the Renaissance and even classical Greece, because these archaic arts were fundamentally more vital and rooted in everyday life.
Piccolo cavaliere is one of a few outstanding equine sculptures that Marini executed in the 1940s which use a reductive simplicity of form to celebrate the ancient and sacred relationship between man and horse in the attempt to convey this mystic union as a single, tangible and very material presence. Owing much to the elegant and simple forms of ancient Etruscan sculpture as well as to the modern Etruscan-influenced sculpture of Arturo Martini, many of these 1940s works, including Piccolo cavaliere, deliberately contrast the earthy materiality of the united man/horse figure with a deep sense of spirituality by showing the rider ecstatically gazing up to the heavens and contemplating the infinite beyond. Piccolo cavaliere in particular conveys a powerfully physical sense of this union by subtly distorting the forms of the man and horse. Expressing an extraordinarily forceful sense of power, potency and earthy vitality, the elongated neck and head of the horse thrusts forward into the empty space surrounding the work, protruding like a giant phallus from between the legs of the rider who, by contrast, is reduced in size. This small rider sitting astride the animal seems to rise from its back as he leans back from his seat and looks up in ecstasy towards the heavens. His relaxed, self-embracing pose and the warm smile on his face express the figure's sense of ease, comfort and contentment. In this way Marini both emotionally and erotically conveys a sense of the sacred marriage between Man and Nature by showing the horse and rider as a union of the mental intelligence and spiritual awareness of man with the raw physical vitality and strength of the horse.
This sacred marriage between Man and Nature was one that Marini in the aftermath of the war believed was under threat from the modern world. Increasingly coming to play the central role in his art, this sacred union forms the thematic source of all of his horse and rider sculptures from the post-war period - many of which developed in the 1950s into a depiction of the breaking of this bond through a series of increasingly dramatic and expressive poses of horses and riders falling. "The whole history of humanity and nature lies in the figure of the horse and rider in every period," Marini wrote. "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. (Marino Marini quoted in Marino Marini, Pistoia, 1979, pp. 29-30.) Recalling the simple archaic beauty of Etruscan art, Piccolo cavaliere uses a simple elegance of form to articulate this theme of Man and Nature and to invoke a sense of the mystery and primal energy of the ancients.
Marini once observed that the most powerful source for his horse-and-rider image was that of the homeless crowds of people fleeing Milan on horseback before the advancement of the Allied armies at the end of the Second World War. Evidently, the timeless image of the horse and rider impressed itself on Marini as a dramatic and poignant contrast to the collective anonymity and impersonality of a modern mechanised army on the march. In addition, the fact that in their panic and despair, people resorted to this more ancient but more personal, practical and animistic form of transport would also have impressed an artist who considered Etruscan and Egyptian art superior to the more derivative arts of Ancient Rome, the Renaissance and even classical Greece, because these archaic arts were fundamentally more vital and rooted in everyday life.
Piccolo cavaliere is one of a few outstanding equine sculptures that Marini executed in the 1940s which use a reductive simplicity of form to celebrate the ancient and sacred relationship between man and horse in the attempt to convey this mystic union as a single, tangible and very material presence. Owing much to the elegant and simple forms of ancient Etruscan sculpture as well as to the modern Etruscan-influenced sculpture of Arturo Martini, many of these 1940s works, including Piccolo cavaliere, deliberately contrast the earthy materiality of the united man/horse figure with a deep sense of spirituality by showing the rider ecstatically gazing up to the heavens and contemplating the infinite beyond. Piccolo cavaliere in particular conveys a powerfully physical sense of this union by subtly distorting the forms of the man and horse. Expressing an extraordinarily forceful sense of power, potency and earthy vitality, the elongated neck and head of the horse thrusts forward into the empty space surrounding the work, protruding like a giant phallus from between the legs of the rider who, by contrast, is reduced in size. This small rider sitting astride the animal seems to rise from its back as he leans back from his seat and looks up in ecstasy towards the heavens. His relaxed, self-embracing pose and the warm smile on his face express the figure's sense of ease, comfort and contentment. In this way Marini both emotionally and erotically conveys a sense of the sacred marriage between Man and Nature by showing the horse and rider as a union of the mental intelligence and spiritual awareness of man with the raw physical vitality and strength of the horse.
This sacred marriage between Man and Nature was one that Marini in the aftermath of the war believed was under threat from the modern world. Increasingly coming to play the central role in his art, this sacred union forms the thematic source of all of his horse and rider sculptures from the post-war period - many of which developed in the 1950s into a depiction of the breaking of this bond through a series of increasingly dramatic and expressive poses of horses and riders falling. "The whole history of humanity and nature lies in the figure of the horse and rider in every period," Marini wrote. "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. (Marino Marini quoted in Marino Marini, Pistoia, 1979, pp. 29-30.) Recalling the simple archaic beauty of Etruscan art, Piccolo cavaliere uses a simple elegance of form to articulate this theme of Man and Nature and to invoke a sense of the mystery and primal energy of the ancients.