Marino Marini *

(Pistoia 1901–1980 Viareggio)
Cavaliere, 1951, stamped with the initials ‘M. M.’ (on the base), hand chiseled bronze with brown green patina, 55.6 x 43.4 x 31.1 cm
Conceived in 1951 and cast in an edition of 6

This work is registered in the Fondazione Marino Marini, Pistoia and is accompanied by a photocopy of the certificate of authenticity

We are grateful to Fondazione Marino Marini, Pistoia for confirming the correspondence with their archival records

Provenance:
Private Collection (acquired directly from the artist)
European Corporate Collection

Exhibited:
Arona, Estetika. Forma & segno. Da Renoir a de Chirico, Villa Ponti, 28 June – 23 November 2008, exhib. cat. p. 101 with ill.
Arona, de Chirico 900. Bellezza e Realtà, Villa Ponti, 31 October 2009 – 28 March 2010, exhib. cat. p. 120 with ill.
Lonigo, Il fantasma della forma da Renoir a Mastroianni, Palazzo Pisani, 21 December 2013 – 16 February 2014, exhib. cat. p. 11 with ill.

Literature:
U. Apollonio, Marino Marini scultore, Milan 1953, no. 98 (another cast ill.)
Exhib. cat., Mostra di Marino Marini, Rome, Palazzo Venezia, 10 March – 10 June 1966, no. 52, p. 39 (another cast ill., fig. 30)
A. M. Hammacher, Marino Marini: Sculpture, Painting, Drawing, London, 1970, no. 168, p. 321 (another cast ill. p. 175)
H. Read, P. Waldberg & G. di San Lazzaro, Marino Marini, Complete Works, New York, 1970, no. 281, p. 365 (another cast ill.)
C. Pirovano, Marino Marini scultore, Milan, 1972, no. 287, p. 162 (another cast ill., p. 163)
‘Hommage a Marino Marini’, in XXe Siècle, Paris 1974 (another cast. ill. p. 35)
M. Meneguzzo, Cavalli e cavalieri, Milan 1997, no. 62, p. 221 (another cast ill.)
G. Carandente (ed.), Marino Marini, Catalogue Raisonné of the Sculptures, Milan 1998, no. 354 b, p. 251 (another cast ill. p. 250)
C. Occhipinti, Estetika, I tesori della scultura, Habitare, 2009, p. 6 with ill.

Marini Marini’s 1951 work Cavaliere fits into one of the most emblematic cores of his research: the equestrian theme, developed throughout his entire career as a symbolic space of tension between balance and catastrophe, control and loss.
In this sculpture, the relationship between man and animal is no longer a heroic celebration - as in the Western monumental tradition - but is configured as a fragile system of unstable forces. The horse, elongated and almost totemic, appears stiffened in an unnatural posture, with its neck extended vertically in a gesture that suggests alertness, tension, or even anguish. The rider, reduced to an essential, almost primitive form, does not dominate the animal but clings to it, losing all connotations of authority.
Marini employs a radical formal simplification: the volumes are compact, and the surfaces vibrate with an irregular texture that retains the memory of the sculptural process. This choice is not only stylistic but deeply expressive. The roughness of the bronze, far from any academic smoothness, becomes the site where a restless existential condition, typical of the post-Second World War climate, is inscribed.
The year 1951 is indeed a crucial moment: Marini’s figures begin to lose stability, anticipating the fall that will become explicit in subsequent works. Here we are still in a phase of suspension: the rider is seated, but his position is precarious, and the horse seems on the verge of reacting or breaking that balance. It is a held tension, which transforms the sculpture into a psychological image rather than a narrative one.
One can also read in this work a dialogue with archaic and Mediterranean art - from the Etruscans to Romanesque sculpture - filtered through a modern sensitivity and a tragic awareness of history. The archetype of the horse and rider, emptied of rhetoric, thus becomes a universal metaphor for the human condition: the impossibility of fully governing the forces that pass through us.