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Lot Essay
Originally conceived in 1951, this Piccolo miracolo motif appears to have been the first depiction of the tumbling horse and rider that Marini accorded the title 'Miracolo', heralding a new and significant theme in his work. More than any of his other themes, the Miracoli captured the anguish that he felt at the numerous tragedies befalling the world. This encompassed a range of issues, from the endless stampede of technology, which was literally changing the landscape of Europe as machines rampaged through, to war itself. In many ways, the two were united in the tanks and mechanised artillery that had bulldozed so much of historic Italy. At the same time, these same developments were making the horse and rider a thing of the past. Marini himself remarked that
'The entire history of humanity and of nature exists within the figure of the horse and rider, in every era. As a child, I observed these beings, man and horse, and they were a question mark to me. In the beginning there was a 'harmony' between them, but in the end, in contrast to this unity, the world of the car arrived, a world which captured it in a dramatic, but no less vital and vitalising manner' (L. Papi (ed.), Centro di documentazione dell'opera di Marino Marini, Livorno, 1979, pp. 29-30).
The stampede of war in particular, with Italy ravaged by the advances and retreats of various armies, heightened people's sense of the destruction caused by technology. Marini had managed to avoid much of the war, living in Switzerland for some of it. However, on his return to a bombed Milan it was impossible to avoid its scars. In a sense, though, it was the contrast that Marini saw between the gutted and impoverished Italy and the United States, prosperous and undamaged, which he visited for the first time in 1950, that truly brought the paradoxes of modern existence to the artist's attention. On the one hand, a new angularity reminiscent of the sleek high-rises of New York entered his work, but on the other a certain fatalism also came in. Marini's anguish became more and more overt in his sculptures, as is clear in this motif of the rider coming unstuck from his horse. The smoothed, noble creatures of the 1940s gave way to tender yet tormented visions of chaos, of angst. It is therefore no coincidence that this Piccolo miracolo cemented the theme of the unhorsed rider in Marini's canon such a short time after the artist's return from the United States.
The Miracles in particular reflect the disruption of this union between man and horse, or between Man and Nature. It is not the horse, or its falling, that torments the rider. Instead, it is his existence itself. The rider is not escaping his steed, but is instead writhing as he tries to escape the Earth itself. He is keeping himself aloft to avoid the ground, while stretching up to the skies, desperately seeking some, any alternative to the disrupted and destructive existence provided by terrestrial life. Meanwhile, the horse has buckled, under too much pressure not only from the rider himself, but also from time as it marches on, and from the torment of the impossible quest to seek some other way, some other means of being:
'The overturned riders are The Miracles. The idea is that they destroy themselves, they become a burned element... [the rider] feels no longer at ease on land, he wants to make a hole in the crust of the earth, to pierce it and fall into the cosmos. He may not stay among men who are no longer in peace. The horse surrenders and the rider is lost' (M. Marini, quoted in op. cit., 1998, p. 14).
'The entire history of humanity and of nature exists within the figure of the horse and rider, in every era. As a child, I observed these beings, man and horse, and they were a question mark to me. In the beginning there was a 'harmony' between them, but in the end, in contrast to this unity, the world of the car arrived, a world which captured it in a dramatic, but no less vital and vitalising manner' (L. Papi (ed.), Centro di documentazione dell'opera di Marino Marini, Livorno, 1979, pp. 29-30).
The stampede of war in particular, with Italy ravaged by the advances and retreats of various armies, heightened people's sense of the destruction caused by technology. Marini had managed to avoid much of the war, living in Switzerland for some of it. However, on his return to a bombed Milan it was impossible to avoid its scars. In a sense, though, it was the contrast that Marini saw between the gutted and impoverished Italy and the United States, prosperous and undamaged, which he visited for the first time in 1950, that truly brought the paradoxes of modern existence to the artist's attention. On the one hand, a new angularity reminiscent of the sleek high-rises of New York entered his work, but on the other a certain fatalism also came in. Marini's anguish became more and more overt in his sculptures, as is clear in this motif of the rider coming unstuck from his horse. The smoothed, noble creatures of the 1940s gave way to tender yet tormented visions of chaos, of angst. It is therefore no coincidence that this Piccolo miracolo cemented the theme of the unhorsed rider in Marini's canon such a short time after the artist's return from the United States.
The Miracles in particular reflect the disruption of this union between man and horse, or between Man and Nature. It is not the horse, or its falling, that torments the rider. Instead, it is his existence itself. The rider is not escaping his steed, but is instead writhing as he tries to escape the Earth itself. He is keeping himself aloft to avoid the ground, while stretching up to the skies, desperately seeking some, any alternative to the disrupted and destructive existence provided by terrestrial life. Meanwhile, the horse has buckled, under too much pressure not only from the rider himself, but also from time as it marches on, and from the torment of the impossible quest to seek some other way, some other means of being:
'The overturned riders are The Miracles. The idea is that they destroy themselves, they become a burned element... [the rider] feels no longer at ease on land, he wants to make a hole in the crust of the earth, to pierce it and fall into the cosmos. He may not stay among men who are no longer in peace. The horse surrenders and the rider is lost' (M. Marini, quoted in op. cit., 1998, p. 14).