Tribute to Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Art · Subcategory: Sculpture · Year: 1992 · Authors: César Manrique

This large mobile sculpture was designed by the Lanzarote artist César Manrique in 1992, a few days before his death. 

It belongs to the series Juguetes del Viento (Toys of the Wind) and its sketch was recovered shortly after the death of the brilliant artist for its installation, initially planned at the top of the Palmetum. The idea was soon discarded; then it was planned to install it in the projected roundabout at the northern entrance to the city, at the intersection of Tres de Mayo, Manuel Hermoso Rojas and Benito Pérez Armas avenues; an idea that also did not materialise. Finally, it was definitively located in the year 2000 where we see it today, near the Castillo Negro and the Casa de la Pólvora, very close to the Parque Marítimo also designed by Manrique.

Tribute to Santa Cruz is an immense mobile object fifteen metres high that emerges from a circular structure made of masonry. Its figure stands out for its rhomboidal composition, with a base of crossed axes embedded in a solid ashlar structure in the shape of a truncated pyramid. The profiles are made of steel covered in white iron; both the axis and the concentric circles resting on it are stainless steel. Sixteen movable blades sway with the breath of the nearby sea breezes and the constant trade winds.

This enormous artistic work that plays with the movement of the air fits harmoniously with both the modern buildings erected around it (Auditorium, Fairground, Parque Marítimo) and the old ones (Castillo Negro and Casa de la Pólvora).

28.455791, -16.252913