Marino Marini

Inspired by the equestrian statue at the Bamberg Cathedral, Marino Marini''s interest in horses and riders began between 1935 and 1936. After a preliminary phase in which the subject was explored along with others, his deep investigation of horses and riders took over after the war, helping to define decisively an extraordinarily intense and consistent formal parable that was in line with contemporary international trends but that was profoundly original at the same time. From the creation of archetypal figures with Etruscan roots through a process of progressive volumetric compression ultimately reaching the figure''s geometric decomposition, the story of Marini''s horses and riders constitutes one of the most outstanding moments in twentieth-century Italian art. His path is traced here in a critical anthology with a rich array of images, as well as through a series of new studies on his horses and riders, on the figure of the humanist artist during the cold war and on the use of color in his sculpture. texts by: Giuliana Altea, Lorenzo Giusti, Francesco Guzzetti, Mattia Patti, Alberto Salvadori.