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Property from a European collection MARINO MARINI (1901-1980) Cavallo stamped with the artist's i...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:750,000.00 - 1,000,000.00 USD
Property from a European collection MARINO MARINI (1901-1980) Cavallo stamped with the artist's i...
Property from a
European collection
MARINO MARINI
(1901-1980)
Cavallo
stamped with the artist's initials
and the foundry mark "mm MAF, Milan" (on the top of the base)
bronze
height: 28 3/4 in. (73 cm)
cast in 1942 in an edition of six
Estimate: $750,000-1,000,000 <p>Provenance
Curt Valentin Gallery, New York (by 1953) <p>Literature
Umbro Apollonio, Marino Marini, Sculptor, Milan, 1953 (another cast illustrated, pl. 25)
Herbert Read, Patrick Waldberg, and G. di San Lazzaro, Marino Marini: L'oeuvre complet, Paris, 1970, p. 339, no. 123 (another cast illustrated, p. 360)
Carlo Pirovano, Marino Marini, Sculpture, Milan, 1973, no. 132
Marino Marini, Sculture, pitture, disegni dal 1914 al 1971, exh. cat., Palazzo Grassi, Venice, 1983, p. 111, no. 39 (another version illustrated, pl. XVIII)
Marino Marini (1901-1980), Plastiken, Bilder, Zeichnungen,
exh. cat., Residenz, Munich, 1984, no. 10 (another cast illustrated)
Carlo Pirovano, Marino Marini, Milan, 1988, p. 88 (another cast illustrated, fig. 71)
Jean-Marie Drot, Marino Marini antologica 1919-1978, exh. cat., Villa Medici, Rome, 1991, p. 61 (another cast illustrated in color)
Marino Marini, Sculptures et dessins, exh. cat., Espace van Gogh, Arles, 1995, p. 52, no. 10 (another cast illustrated in color, p. 53)
Marino Marini aus der Sammlung Marino Marini: Gemalde (mit umlaut), Skulpturen, Zeichnungen, Kunsthaus, Vienna, 1995, pl. 71 (another cast illustrated)
Marco Meneguzzo, Marino Marini-cavalli e cavalieri, Milan, 1997, pp. 74-75, no. 16a (plaster cast illustrated, pp. 74 and 75)
Giovanni Carandente, Marino Marini, Catalogue Raisonné of the Sculptures, Milan, 1998, no. 173b (another cast illustrated)
This powerful piece represents a central theme at a pivotal time in the development of Marino Marini's oeuvre. Turning to sculpture in the late 1920s, Marini's works were almost exclusively restricted to two subjects: the female figure and the horse and rider. Equestrian subjects dominated much of Classical and Pre-Classical statutory, from the most votive and amuletic figures to the most triumphant groups such as the celebrated statue of Marcus Aurelius on the Capitol in Rome. In choosing such subjects, Marini emphasized his links with the great tradition of sculpture, which spans practically every epoch. Inspired by the classicism of Etruscan art and the evocative nature of the work of Aristide Maillol (1861-1944), Marini's early sculpture developed a certain monumental immobility, the finish often smooth and elegantly simplified. "In the end, my passion for the horse represented a personal research into a kind of visual architecture. The horse's form is the opposite of man's; the horse is horizontal, man is vertical ... However, the concept changed over the years, and at a certain point what had been serene and tranquil became agitated and expressionistic" (Marino Marini quoted in Sam Hunter, MARINO MARINI, THE SCULPTURE, New York, 1993, pg.78).
The present piece, dating from the years of World War II (most of which Marini had spent in Switzerland), maintains a balance and serenity, which was to become angular and expressive in works towards the end of the decade. Cavallo has a solid equilibrium that maintains the harmony between the soft curves of the horse's frame and the squared off and characterized form of its head. Here rider-less, there is only the suggestion of movement, but already the sense of character from the horse implies man's struggle to control the beast. By the late 1940s and early 1950s, the horse is invariably attempting to dismount its rider, until Marini reduces the form itself to the limit of expressionistic abstraction, influenced by the geometric forms of Fritz Wotruba (1907-1975) and the elongated and coarsely finished work of Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) and Germaine Richier (1904-1959). This transition is often considered to reflect the changing tone of the times, and in Marini's own words: "When you consider one by one my equestrian statues of these past twelve years, you will notice each time that the horseman is incapable of managing his mount, and that the animal, in its restlessness ever more riderless, comes more and more to a rigid standstill instead of rearing. I believe in the most serious way that we are heading toward the end of the world" (quoted in Herbert Read et al., op. cit., p. 187).
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