Marino Marini. Horses and ride / Cavalli e cavalieri

Marino´s equestrian groups are certainly his best-known subjects. They can be seen as a real symbol, a truly original language that he used to express himself and to interpret reality. He said in fact that the entire history of humanity and nature can be found in the figure of the horse and rider, whatever the era. It is my way of narrating history. I need this personage to give life to the passions of man (…).
However he also said that the rider gradually becomes less and less able to control his horse and the animal grows increasingly agitated, getting so stiff so that it is no longer able to rear up.
Thus the horses and riders become the lacerated and tragic forms of the Miracles, or "expressionists", because, as Marino himself said, it is really the world that has become expressionist. These dissolved and extremely dramatic forms fully express Marino´s anxiety, of completely ethical origin, for the human condition. Fossils, Screams, Warriors and Compositions of elements are among the titles he gave his work when the horse/rider form was finally reduced to an unconnected and fragmentary group, when the two figures became more or less unrecognizable. They recall a drama or a tragedy that has been consumed, leaving dramatic and lifeless forms alone. The surfaces are sharp, the harsh lines cleave into the space and break it up violently so that nothing seems to have survived of the harmonious relationship between man and nature.