Street Sculpture Route I: 07. Warrior of Goslar

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Route · Subcategory: Street sculpture I · Year: 1974 · Authors: Henry Moore

We are facing one of the highest quality works of art found on the streets of the city of Santa Cruz. Located right on the Rambla and born from the I International Street Sculpture Exhibition , this "reclining warrior" is the work of Henry Moore, one of the most important contemporary artists in the world. His sculptural work is well known and world famous. 

The reclining figure was a subject the artist persistently explored throughout his career. The one located on the Rambla is the only monumental work of his placed in a public space in Spain. 

Moore initially presented for the I International Street Sculpture Exhibition his monumental Reclining Figure , made in 1963. It was a working model of the impressive colossus split into two blocks that are integrated into the Lincoln Center in New York. This work had to be returned to the lender (Tate Gallery in London), but later the artist donated to the city, definitively, this Warrior of Goslar which exemplifies the vast oeuvre of this magnificent English artist.

The sculpture, installed in its current location in 1977, is made of bronze and shows that it is not only a manifestation but also an embodiment of space. Its figure, representing a fallen or reclining soldier with the head at one end and the shield at the feet, is a metaphor demonstrating weakness rather than power, peace rather than war, and sensitivity rather than glory.

The Warrior of Goslar , also known as The Warrior's Rest , is one of the great artistic works of Santa Cruz. It forms part of the urban landscape, integrating so naturally that it seems it has always been there.

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