The Horse in Richard Somonte’s Work: Movement, Anatomy and Freedom

There are figures that appear in an artist’s work as recurring motifs, and there are others that eventually become part of the artist’s own visual language. In the painting of Richard Somonte, the horse belongs to this second category.

Throughout his career, the horse has appeared in different series and periods of his work, but its presence is not simply an aesthetic choice. Its origins can be found in the artist’s own biography and in a relationship with the animal that began during his childhood in Cuba and gradually developed into a pictorial investigation of anatomy, movement and freedom.

A Memory of Childhood in Cuba

Richard spent the early years of his childhood in Guanabacoa, one of the historic municipalities of Havana. On his mother’s side of the family, they owned a farm with a house and extensive grounds, a place he remembers as a childhood deeply connected to nature and rural life.

His grandfather owned horses, and Richard grew up familiar with them from an early age. Before becoming a subject of artistic investigation, the horse was part of his everyday experience: an animal he knew, observed and lived alongside.

That early relationship left a lasting impression. The image of the horse became associated with a childhood memory that the artist describes as deeply guajiro—rooted in the Cuban countryside, nature and a way of life far removed from the urban environment.

Years later, when his artistic education took him to the city and eventually to Spain, the horse would reappear from a different perspective.

Spain: Rediscovering the Horse

Richard’s arrival in Spain brought a new encounter with the equestrian world. Spain possesses one of Europe’s most important horse-breeding traditions and is the homeland of the Purebred Spanish Horse, a breed whose history dates back to the sixteenth century and whose development is closely connected to Spanish equestrian culture, aristocratic traditions and the history of art. Among its characteristic qualities are the harmony of its proportions, balance, intelligence and versatility.

For a painter interested in anatomy and the representation of the body in motion, the Spanish horse offered a particularly rich subject: an animal whose structure, elegance, musculature and relationship with the rider form part of a deeply established visual tradition in Spanish painting.

His encounter with El Rocío, in Huelva, was particularly significant.

El Rocío is a small village associated with the Sanctuary of El Rocío and internationally known for its pilgrimage. During the pilgrimage, thousands of people travel to the village on horseback, in horse-drawn carriages or on foot, maintaining an equestrian tradition that has become an essential part of the visual and cultural identity of the celebration.

For Richard, this landscape represented a new way of approaching the horse: no longer solely as a memory of his Cuban childhood, but as the protagonist of a living Spanish cultural tradition.

From that point onwards, he began to study the animal's anatomy, proportions and, above all, the way in which a seemingly static body can contain the sensation of movement.

Velázquez: The Horse Between What Is Seen and What Is Corrected

Among Richard’s major artistic references is Diego Velázquez, whose painting interests him not only for its technical mastery, but also for what remains hidden beneath the finished surface of a work.

Richard has paid particular attention to the pentimenti visible in some of Velázquez’s paintings: traces of changes and corrections made during the painting process that can become visible over time as the layers of paint evolve.

In the equestrian portraits of kings and princes, these traces acquire a particularly suggestive dimension for Richard. The painting reveals that the final image was not necessarily the artist’s first decision: there were shifts, corrections and modifications in the construction of the horse and the figure.

Velázquez’s horse therefore becomes more than a represented figure. It also becomes the visible result of a process of searching.

This idea has become particularly important in Richard’s own research: the horse can be represented not only through its final appearance, but through the different positions it occupies as it moves.

Delacroix: Strength, Tension and Movement

Another major reference for Richard is Eugène Delacroix, an artist who devoted a significant part of his work to the study of horses and riders.

The Louvre preserves numerous drawings and studies by Delacroix devoted to horses, including anatomical studies, horses in motion and compositions featuring horses and riders. In studies related to The Battle of Taillebourg, for example, the Louvre describes how Delacroix uses rhythm and violent movement to convey the force of the scene, integrating horses and figures into a dynamic composition.

In works such as Fighting Arab Horses in a Stable, the horse itself becomes the protagonist of a scene of physical tension.

Richard finds in Delacroix a way of understanding the animal through energy, rather than anatomy alone.

The horse is not still: it contracts, expands, turns, advances and retreats. Its body generates forces that travel through the composition.

It is precisely this energy that interests Richard: to paint movement without necessarily representing a sequence of images.

Boccioni and the Painting of Movement

This search finds another fundamental reference in Umberto Boccioni.

Richard has found in Boccioni’s work a radically different way of thinking about movement. Rather than representing a body in a single fixed position, Boccioni sought to convey the continuity of action and the relationship between the body and space.

This idea is fundamental to understanding the way Richard currently approaches the horse.

One leg may appear displaced in relation to another; a head may suggest an earlier or later position; different moments of a stride can coexist within the same figure.

The result is not intended as an anatomically impossible representation, but as a way of making time visible within a body.

In this sense, Richard does not simply paint a horse: he paints the possibility of that horse moving, turning, leaping or passing through space.

Anatomy thus becomes a tool for representing something that cannot remain still: movement.

Kuniyoshi and Yoshitoshi: The Horse in Ukiyo-e

Richard’s more recent research into the horse has also been enriched by his fascination with ukiyo-e, particularly the work of Utagawa Kuniyoshi and Tsukioka Yoshitoshi. Both artists frequently represented warriors, legendary figures and horses, treating the animal not merely as an accompaniment to the human figure but as an active element within the drama of the composition. In Kuniyoshi’s prints, horses often appear in highly dynamic poses, their bodies stretched, twisted or foreshortened to intensify the sense of action and movement. Yoshitoshi, working later in the nineteenth century, continued this tradition while introducing an increasingly dramatic and psychologically charged treatment of the warrior and the animal. Richard is particularly interested in the way these artists use line, gesture, rhythm and composition to suggest movement, often creating an image in which the instant represented seems to extend beyond the frame. His dialogue with ukiyo-e has therefore opened another path in his investigation of the horse: one in which movement is not only observed through anatomy, but also constructed through the visual rhythm of the image.

The Horse as a Symbol of Freedom

This investigation has gradually led the artist towards a more symbolic interpretation.

For Richard, the horse represents freedom, strength, power and dynamism, but also the possibility of escaping a fixed form.

The animal allows him to explore a central question in his painting: how to represent what changes within what remains.

The horse’s body is recognizable, yet its position can transform; its legs can multiply the possibilities of movement; its anatomy can become a structure capable of containing different moments.

This concern has even extended beyond painting into his sculptural research. In works such as The Mare with 14 Legs and The Mare with 12 Legs, Richard multiplies the limbs not to depict different animals, but to suggest different moments in the movement of a single body. This research stems from his interest in Boccioni and in the possibility of representing continuous movement in space.

Swimming mares

In the series Yeguas Nadadoras (Swimming Mares), this investigation reaches another dimension.

The horse leaves the ground and enters the water. The familiar relationship between body, gravity and movement is transformed.

The animal swims, floats and moves through a space in which the usual rules of terrestrial locomotion no longer apply. The legs no longer serve their habitual function of supporting the body, and movement becomes freer, almost suspended.

The horse appears between two states: animal and movement, body and water, earth and flotation.

The series allows Richard to take to its furthest point a concern present throughout much of his work: finding, within a recognizable figure, the possibility of representing something that cannot be stopped.

An Icon That Continues to Transform

From the horses of his childhood in Guanabacoa to his current investigations into anatomy and movement, the horse has accompanied Richard Somonte throughout much of his artistic career.

Cuba provided the memory and direct experience of the animal. Spain offered a new cultural and equestrian context. Velázquez showed him the possibilities contained even within an apparently finished image; Delacroix, the strength and tension of movement; Boccioni, the possibility of making movement a dimension of painting itself.

The result is a figure that has ceased to be simply a subject and has become a pictorial language.

In Richard Somonte’s work, the horse remains recognizable, but it is never completely still.

Its body contains movement. And movement, in turn, contains an idea of freedom.