Los Caballos (The Horses)
Oliveira’s Caballos in Praza de España
The day The Horses by Juan José Oliveira entered Vigo in 1991 is etched in the city’s collective memory. This stunning group of sculptures is 60 feet high, and since it took its place over a huge pond in Praza de España Square, it has not ceased to amaze the people of Vigo and its visitors. This emblematic sculpture in Vigo weighs 40 tons and represents a herd of five horses ascending into the sky on a waterfall.
Oliveira is known as “The Lord of the Horses”, since this is the central theme of his work. He liked to represent them as if driven by an intrinsic energy that lifted them from the ground in complicated foreshortened movements. The piece in Praza de España is essential to understand his artistic career.
Neither the place chosen for the monument nor its figures are fortuitous: a few feet away, wild horses formerly inhabited O Castro Mountain, and they now graze on other mountains of Vigo.
The Los Caballos monument in Vigo will be the first thing you see of the city centre if you’re coming from Ourense or Madrid.
Practical information
-
Pza. de España