my sincere wish to communicate with as

many human beings as possible I shall try

again.3
For Basil Marriott, reviewing the exhibition
for the Builder, Charoux had been all too
successful in his task (though not in the way
Charoux would have hoped), prompting
Marriott to dismiss the piece sardonically as a
gratuitous reminder of the newer brutalism
with the end of petrol rationing.4
When the sculpture was first acquired for the
Shell Building, it was sited in the Downstream
Courtyard, but was moved to the Upstream
Courtyard when the Downstream building was
sold off.5 Asked to provide a few notes of
explanation by the new owners, Charoux
wrote:
[this] is the first of a series of sculpture
dealing rather with mans activity than his
appearance in nudity.
Attempts (hope successfully) to find
sculptural values of contemporary clothing.
Mans contact with machine so close that it
fuses man and machine to a unit. Aims at
large form, perforated by disciplined holes
which emphasize three-dimensionality and
secure readable silhouette.
I am intelligent but not intellectual and
hence incapable of explaining anything
more, especially if it isnt there.6
Notes

S. Charoux, Motorcyclist

individuality peculiar to the true art of our

time.
I have set myself the task of finding a
theme peculiar to our time and shaping it in
a material and technique also peculiar to our
time; and the result is Man, 1957. If I have
not succeeded in my task which includes

[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] Minet
Archives & Library, Shell Centre, 1963, p. 32; also,
information from Andy Birthwright, Shell
International Petroleum Company. [6] Shell
International Petroleum Company archives, Siegfried
Charoux, typed notes (undated).

In the Shell Centres York Road reception

area, by the window, to the right of the
entrance:

Horse and Rider

Sculptor: Marino Marini
Founder: unknown
Material: bronze
Dimensions, including bronze self-base:
h. 2.4m, w. 1.57m, d. 1.2m
Inscription, on a wooden plaque on a stand
bolted to the bronze self-base: horse and
rider / marino marini / 1961
[there are also two typed information
plaques giving details of the sculpture and
sculptor, one in the window for passers-by
and the other facing into the reception area
for visitors]
Signed, in monogram in raised letters on a small
raised block on the upper surface of the selfbase towards the rear: m.m
Executed: 1956571
Erected, originally in the Shell Centres Inner
Hall: 1961
Exhibited: 19591961, London, Tate Gallery
Status: not listed
Owner: Shell International Petroleum
Company
Description: A horse and rider, modelled as a
series of simplified, sharply-angled, faceted
planes, their surfaces left deliberately rough.
The horse stands with legs rigidly splayed, head
raised to one side, the rider appearing to lose
balance and fall sideways.
Condition: Good
History: Marinis Horse and Rider, 195657,
was purchased for 5,800 in about 1959 for the
Shell Centres inner hall, on the suggestion of
the halls designer, the Italian architect Ernesto
Rogers.2 From 2 May 1961 until 1962, while the
building was still under construction, Horse
and Rider was on loan to the Tate Gallery. In
about 1997, the then Chairman made

LAMBETH

/ Lambeth / Belvedere Road 33

arrangements for the sculpture to be relocated

to the York Road lobby, where it stands to this
day, in accordance with his wishes that it be
seen by the public.3
It has been argued that to understand
Marinis Horse and Rider series, one needs first
to understand the place of the equestrian
monument in Italy, embodying as it does the
myth of the mounted imperial leader in
examples ranging from the second century AD
equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome
to the 1930s equestrian statue of Mussolini in
Bologna.4 Marini wanted to explore an
alternative to this classical tradition. His
discovery in 1934 of the Bamberg Rider
(Bamberg Cathedral, c.123537) was seminal,
the humility he discerned in the German rider

M. Marini, Horse and Rider

34

contrasting sharply with the condottiere spirit

of Italian models by Donatello and Verrocchio.
Marini later acknowledged the Bamberg Rider
as the model for his first rider series:

and victorious individualism, of the

Humanists virtuous man visible. My work
from these last years is not intended to be
heroic, but tragic.8

On my travels through Italy, I was never

impressed by the equestrian monuments of
Rome, Venice or Padua, but, the one in
Bamberg, Germany, made a tremendous
impact, perhaps because it came to light in a
fairy-tale world, far away from us, in a
forgotten corner 5

In each successive treatment, you will see that

the rider is less able to control his horse each
time and that the animal stiffens into an ever
wilder state of fear, instead of rearing up. I
seriously believe that we are heading toward the
end of a [sic] world.9 It is this version, from
195657, the horse stiff-legged in fear, its head
raised in alarm, and the rider tipping sideways
from his mount, that stands in the window of
the Shell Buildings lobby.

Marinis concept of the horse and rider was

completely transformed by the effects of the
conflicts which began to sweep through Europe
in the late 1930s, starting with the Spanish Civil
War and culminating in the Second World War.
The terrified horse in Picassos Guernica, which
Marini saw in the Spanish Pavilion at the
Exhibition Universelle, Paris, in 1937, exerted a
powerful influence, as also did the sight of the
people of Milan fleeing on horseback from the
advancing tanks of the allied forces in the
closing stages of the Second World War.6 The
enlightening moment, however, which
transformed irrevocably his image of horse and
rider from one of vitality and stability to one of
a tragic loss of control was evidently a quite
incidental view from a train shortly after the
end of the war, of a startled horse rearing up as
the train passed: Though in reality it lasted just
a moment, the vision endured in the artists
mind and came to emblematize his feelings
about his world and times.7
In 1972, Marini wrote that his rider
sculptures:
express the torment caused by the events
of this century. The restlessness of my horse
grows with each new work, the rider appears
increasingly worn out, he has lost his
dominance over the beast and the
catastrophes to which he succumbs are
similar to those which destroyed Sodom and
Pompeii. I hope to make the last stage of the
dissolution of a myth the myth of heroic

PUBLIC SCULPTURE OF SOUTH LONDON

Related works: Plaster model, entitled Rider,

195657, collection of the artist (in 1970);10 a
bronze edition of five was cast, the other four
being at (i) Fukushima Prefectural Museum of
Art, Fukushima; (ii) Fondazione Marino
Marini, Palazzo del Tau, Pistoia; (iii, iv) private
collections.11
Notes
[1] Trier, E., 1961, pl. 129; Carandente, G., 1998, p.
297 (cat. no. 427). [2] As stated on an information
plaque next to the sculpture. [3] Minet Archives &
Library, Shell International Petroleum Company Ltd,
1963, p. 31; supplemented by notes from a meeting
with Andy Birthwright (Shell International
Petroleum Company), 15 Jan 2001, with information
derived from original correspondence and verbal
information, etc. [4] Nicholas Watkins, From
Fascism to the Bomb: Marino Marini and the Myth of
the Classical European Horseman, paper presented 4
June 2003 to accompany the exhibition Scultura
Lingua Morta: The Sculpture of Fascist Italy, Henry
Moore 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).