individuality peculiar to the true art of ourtime.

I have set myself the task of finding atheme peculiar to our time and shaping it ina material and technique also peculiar to ourtime; and the result is Man, 1957. If I havenot succeeded in my task – which includes

my sincere wish to communicate with asmany human beings as possible – I shall tryagain.3

For Basil Marriott, reviewing the exhibitionfor the Builder, Charoux had been all toosuccessful in his task (though not in the wayCharoux would have hoped), promptingMarriott to dismiss the piece sardonically as ‘agratuitous reminder of the newer brutalismwith the end of petrol rationing’.4

When the sculpture was first acquired for theShell Building, it was sited in the DownstreamCourtyard, but was moved to the UpstreamCourtyard when the Downstream building wassold off.5 Asked to provide a few notes ofexplanation by the new owners, Charouxwrote:

… [this] is the first of a series of sculpturedealing rather with man’s activity than hisappearance in nudity.

Attempts (hope successfully) to findsculptural values of contemporary clothing.Man’s contact with machine so close that itfuses man and machine to a unit. Aims atlarge form, perforated by disciplined holeswhich emphasize three-dimensionality andsecure readable silhouette.

I am intelligent but not intellectual andhence incapable of explaining anythingmore, especially if it isn’t there.6

Notes[1] LCC, 1957, n. pag; Mullins, E., 1962, p. 462. [2] Mullins, E., 1962, p. 462. W.J. Strachan (1984, p. 41), however, gives the date as 1962. [3] LCC, 1957,n. pag. [4] Builder, 14 June 1957, p. 1075. [5] MinetArchives & Library, Shell Centre, 1963, p. 32; also,information from Andy Birthwright, ShellInternational Petroleum Company. [6] ShellInternational Petroleum Company archives, SiegfriedCharoux, typed notes (undated).

In the Shell Centre’s York Road receptionarea, by the window, to the right of theentrance:

Horse and RiderSculptor: Marino MariniFounder: unknown

Material: bronzeDimensions, including bronze self-base:

h. 2.4m, w. 1.57m, d. 1.2mInscription, on a wooden plaque on a stand

bolted to the bronze self-base: horse andrider / marino marini / 1961[there are also two typed informationplaques giving details of the sculpture andsculptor, one in the window for passers-byand the other facing into the reception areafor visitors]

Signed, in monogram in raised letters on a smallraised block on the upper surface of the self-base towards the rear: m.m

Executed: 1956–571

Erected, originally in the Shell Centre’s InnerHall: 1961

Exhibited: 1959–1961, London, Tate GalleryStatus: not listedOwner: Shell International Petroleum

Company

Description: A horse and rider, modelled as aseries of simplified, sharply-angled, facetedplanes, their surfaces left deliberately rough.The horse stands with legs rigidly splayed, headraised to one side, the rider appearing to losebalance and fall sideways.

Condition: Good

History: Marini’s Horse and Rider, 1956–57,was purchased for £5,800 in about 1959 for theShell Centre’s inner hall, on the suggestion ofthe hall’s designer, the Italian architect ErnestoRogers.2 From 2 May 1961 until 1962, while thebuilding was still under construction, Horseand Rider was on loan to the Tate Gallery. Inabout 1997, the then Chairman made

L A M B E T H / Lambeth / Belvedere Road 33

S. Charoux, Motorcyclist

arrangements for the sculpture to be relocatedto the York Road lobby, where it stands to thisday, in accordance with his wishes that it beseen by the public.3

It has been argued that to understandMarini’s Horse and Rider series, one needs firstto understand the place of the equestrianmonument in Italy, embodying as it does themyth of the mounted imperial leader inexamples ranging from the second century AD

equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rometo the 1930s equestrian statue of Mussolini inBologna.4 Marini wanted to explore analternative to this classical tradition. Hisdiscovery in 1934 of the Bamberg Rider(Bamberg Cathedral, c.1235–37) was seminal,the humility he discerned in the German rider

contrasting sharply with the condottiere spiritof Italian models by Donatello and Verrocchio.Marini later acknowledged the Bamberg Rideras the model for his first rider series:

On my travels through Italy, I was neverimpressed by the equestrian monuments ofRome, Venice or Padua, but, the one inBamberg, Germany, made a tremendousimpact, perhaps because it came to light in afairy-tale world, far away from us, in aforgotten corner …5

Marini’s concept of the horse and rider wascompletely transformed by the effects of theconflicts which began to sweep through Europein the late 1930s, starting with the Spanish CivilWar and culminating in the Second World War.The terrified horse in Picasso’s Guernica, whichMarini saw in the Spanish Pavilion at theExhibition Universelle, Paris, in 1937, exerted apowerful influence, as also did the sight of thepeople of Milan fleeing on horseback from theadvancing tanks of the allied forces in theclosing stages of the Second World War.6 The‘enlightening moment’, however, whichtransformed irrevocably his image of horse andrider from one of vitality and stability to one ofa tragic loss of control was evidently a quiteincidental view from a train shortly after theend of the war, of a startled horse rearing up asthe train passed: ‘Though in reality it lasted justa moment, the vision endured in the artist’smind and came to emblematize his feelingsabout his world and times.’7

In 1972, Marini wrote that his ridersculptures:

… express the torment caused by the eventsof this century. The restlessness of my horsegrows with each new work, the rider appearsincreasingly worn out, he has lost hisdominance over the beast and thecatastrophes to which he succumbs aresimilar to those which destroyed Sodom andPompeii. I hope to make the last stage of thedissolution of a myth – the myth of heroic

and victorious individualism, of theHumanist’s virtuous man – visible. My workfrom these last years is not intended to beheroic, but tragic.8

In each successive treatment, ‘you will see thatthe rider is less able to control his horse eachtime and that the animal stiffens into an everwilder state of fear, instead of rearing up. Iseriously believe that we are heading toward theend of a [sic] world.’9 It is this version, from1956–57, the horse stiff-legged in fear, its headraised in alarm, and the rider tipping sidewaysfrom his mount, that stands in the window ofthe Shell Building’s lobby.

Related works: Plaster model, entitled Rider,1956–57, collection of the artist (in 1970);10 abronze edition of five was cast, the other fourbeing at (i) Fukushima Prefectural Museum ofArt, Fukushima; (ii) Fondazione MarinoMarini, Palazzo del Tau, Pistoia; (iii, iv) privatecollections.11

Notes[1] Trier, E., 1961, pl. 129; Carandente, G., 1998, p.297 (cat. no. 427). [2] As stated on an informationplaque next to the sculpture. [3] Minet Archives &Library, Shell International Petroleum Company Ltd,1963, p. 31; supplemented by notes from a meetingwith Andy Birthwright (Shell InternationalPetroleum Company), 15 Jan 2001, with informationderived from original correspondence and verbalinformation, etc. [4] Nicholas Watkins, ‘FromFascism to the Bomb: Marino Marini and the Myth ofthe Classical European Horseman’, paper presented 4June 2003 to accompany the exhibition ‘SculturaLingua Morta: The Sculpture of Fascist Italy’, HenryMoore Institute, Leeds. [5] As quoted in Busignani,A., 1971, p. 14. [6] Hunter, S., 1993, p. 16. [7] Ibid. [8] As quoted in Carandente, G., 1998, p. 14. [9] As quoted in Meneguzzo, M., 1997, p. 21. [10] Hammacher, A.M., 1970, pl. 233. [11] Carandente, G., 1998, p. 297 (cat. no. 427).

34 P U B L I C S C U L P T U R E O F S O U T H L O N D O N

M. Marini, Horse and Rider