The Centers for Art, Culture and Tourism, the César Manrique Foundation and the Cabildo of Lanzarote have signed an agreement to restore two of the mobiles created by the Lanzarote artist César Manrique. These are the Wind Toy located in the roundabout at the entrance to the Guacimeta airport and the one located in the roundabout next to the Foundation, in Tahíche.
This coming Wednesday, July 6, work will begin on the Guacimeta mobile, "badly deteriorated by continuous exposure to the meteorological elements", the Cabildo points out. From that day on, technicians and operators from the EPEL-CACT and the First Island Institution will proceed to remove the artist's work from its current location. Its reproduction will be carried out with materials of superior quality to the originals, "to guarantee greater durability of the work".
Once these works are finished, it will be the turn of the artistic ensemble that is installed in the roundabout at the entrance to the César Manrique Foundation, which will undergo the same intervention. The César Manrique Foundation, meanwhile, will assume the supervision of the tasks of removal, measurement, reproduction and restoration and installation of the mobiles. The works, already restored, must be installed in their current locations before April 30, 2017.
In this regard, the Tourism Councilor of the Cabildo de Lanzarote, Echedey Eugenio, recalls the commitment of the CACT to "keep Manrique's work alive, not only for the well-deserved respect that one of our most universal artists deserves, but also for being responsible for the conservation and maintenance of the artist's work that is owned by the Cabildo de Lanzarote. At the same time," he says, "we contribute to improving the general appearance of the island for tourists and residents."
César Manrique's Wind Toys
An important part of César Manrique's sculpture is made up of mobiles, what he called wind toys. They are solid and metallic structures, composed of spheres, circles and pyramids, which the wind makes ethereal, weightless, in a complex rotary movement, with which the artist wanted to remember and pay tribute to the windmills, very abundant on the island in the past.
The mobile located at the Guacimeta aerodrome is a sculpture that serves as a tribute to José Ramírez Cerdá, who was president of the Cabildo de Lanzarote between 1960 and 1974. Forged in stainless steel, it measures fifteen meters in height. The structure rotates on an axis with pendulums and hollow figures.
For its part, Fobos, thirteen meters high and made of painted galvanized iron, is the name of the sculpture that presides over the Tahiche roundabout since 1994. The sculpture has two replicas, one in Gran Canaria, in Arucas, and another in Fuerteventura, in the municipality of Pájara. Fobos is the name of the largest of the two moons of Mars.