Marino Marini’s œuvre draws on the tradition of Etruscan and Northern European sculpture in developing the main themes his work should focus on: the female nude, the portrait bust and mainly the equestrian figure.

His ongoing concern with the equestrian figure is not to illustrate power, heroism and the pathos traditionally found in this genre. The main objective is to use this classical theme as a metaphor in the light of modernity and the rapidly changing context of contemporary society.
The equestrian first appears in Marini’s work in 1936, when the proportions of horse and rider are still relatively slender and both figures are poised, formal, and calm. By the following year the horse rears and the rider gestures as a sign of the artist’s growing discomfort with the rapid and negative changes of the European political landscape. In 1940 the forms become more simplified and more archaic in spirit leaving room for the inner energies and tensions of rider and horse, potential movements and human emotions.

By the late 1940’s the horse is planted immobile with its neck extended, strained, ears pinned back, and mouth open as in L'angelo della città (Angel of the City; 1948, Guggenheim Foundation, Venice, Italy), the artist’s most iconic sculpture of the time. It conveys affirmation and charged strength associated explicitly with sexual potency.

Marini’s mature paintings of the late 1940’s and the 1950’s show a similar development. The world is in turmoil. The symbolic figure of the equestrian struggles to stay on the back of the horse and occasionally even falls off. The style is controlled and archaic, yet the use of vivid colours, contrasts and graphical elements such as lines and dots express the artist’s uncertainty.

Cavaliere (1953) is an important example of Marini’s painting during this pivotal stage of his oeuvre, which had just been awarded with the Prize for Sculpture of the Venice Biennale in 1952. The ground seems to be shaking with the horse struggling to keep his position. In between this turmoil the experienced rider seems to take his only chance of holding onto the horses neck hoping that the horse will be strong enough to withstand the forces.