Footnotes

The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by the Fondazione Marino Marini.

Provenance
Hanover Gallery, London.
Private collection, New York (acquired from the above in 1947).
Private collection, US (by descent from the above).

Literature
Exh. cat., Marino Marini, Hanover Gallery, London, 1956, no. 15 (another cast illustrated).
A.M. Hammacher, Marino Marini, sculpture, painting, drawing, New York, 1970 (illustrated pl. 102).
H. Read, P. Waldberg, & G. di San Lazzaro, Marino Marini, Complete Works, New York, 1970, no. 186 (another cast illustrated p. 349).
C. Pirovano, Marino Marini Scultore, Milan, 1972, no. 194 (another cast illustrated).
Fondazione Marino Marini (ed.), Marino Marini, Catalogue Raisonné of the Sculptures, Milan, 1998, no. 242a (the ceramic version illustrated p. 171).
Exh. cat., Marino Marini, Cavalli e Cavalieri, Museo d'Arte Provincia di Nuoro, Nuoro, 2013 (the terracotta version illustrated p. 31).


Marino Marini's Piccolo cavaliere was conceived in 1944 during the artist's wartime exile in Switzerland, a moment that marked the beginning of his most prolific period of equestrian sculpture. In stark contrast to the exalted, naturalistic riders that had become bound to Fascist iconography in 1930s Italy, Marini's horsemen are anonymous, generalised figures, stripped of heroic identity and distilled into form, gesture, and texture. The horseman here leans back in repose against the stocky, motionless horse, creating a dynamic tension between stillness and movement, balance and disjunction. Rendered with a raw surface and stylised features, both horse and rider exist in poetic anonymity, evoking timeless archetypes rather than historical personalities.

Marini would return to this motif throughout the 1940s and beyond, exploring the evolving relationship between horse and rider as a metaphor for humanity's precarious place in the modern world. Inspired by the medieval Bamberg Rider, yet consciously opposed to Italy's triumphalist equestrian tradition, Marini forged a new sculptural language — one that combined classical iconography with existential reflection. Cast in bronze after the artist's return to Milan in 1946, the present work was the first example cast from the edition of five, as is demonstrated - according to the Fondazione Marino Marini - by the high quality of its casting. Acquired by the family of the present owner in 1947, it has remained in private ownership for more than seventy years. Together, Piccolo cavaliere constitutes a rare and striking testament to Marini's reimagining of one of sculpture's most enduring themes.