That Weird Statue by the Palau de la Música? Here’s Its Story
I’m sure you’ve noticed the bronze figure on the roundabout on the Paseo de la Alameda. Looking like an enormous, weird sun-like creature with outstretched arms, it is utterly impossible to miss. It is one of the most characterful pieces of public art in the city. And almost nobody knows the story behind it. Here is its moment under the spotlight.
By Juan Ripollés
Born in 1932 in Alzira, Valencia, but raised in Castellón, he is the maximum example of the ‘follow your dreams’ cliché: he boarded a train to Paris in 1954 chasing the idea of becoming an artist, and it worked. Within four years of arriving, his paintings were hanging in the Galerie Drouant-David — the same prestigious address that had shown Picasso and Chagall.
He returned to Spain in the 1960s and eventually settled permanently in Castellón, where he still works today from a farmhouse studio in the hamlet of Mas de Flors. Yes, he is very much alive, indeed.
His style is unmistakable: figures with oversized heads and tiny bodies, bold colour, a rawness that sits somewhere between Miró’s playfulness and Picasso’s formal invention. He has said that his sculptures emphasise the head above all — the seat of the four senses — with the heart completing what the mind begins.
Homenaje al Libro — a very typical Spanish story of protest.
Homenaje al Libro (Homage to the Book) was commissioned by the Spanish Ministry of Education and completed in 2006. The intended home was the serene, historic gardens of the Monasterio de San Miguel de los Reyes — the monastery that houses the Valencian Library. Symbolically… it was a perfect fit. But, not here, no señor!
The neighbours disagreed. Local residents and community groups protested loudly, arguing that Ripollés’s whimsical, confrontational style clashed violently with the solemnity of the ancient monastery. The backlash was fierce enough that the city backed down and began searching for a new location.
That relocation changed the 14-ton sculpture itself. As the piece was sectioned into two parts for transport — a necessary measure given its sheer scale — Ripollés seized the moment. He welded a massive bronze heart onto the back of the figure, and when the sculpture was set into its new position on the roundabout, he placed it with deliberate intention: the book-reading face looks toward the Palacio de las Artes, while the heart looks directly toward the Palau de la Música. Culture on one side, emotion on the other. (Aww!)
But what does it mean? I believe it is what artists would call an allegory: It would read as a figure so overwhelmed by the joy of reading that it has grown extra faces and arms — knowledge expanding the self in every direction.
It is currently missing a hand. In February this year, Storm Nils swept through Valencia with gusts exceeding 80 km/h, and one of the outstretched hands snapped clean off and fell to the grass below. The city has made arrangements for a repair.
More Ripollés in Valencia
Homenaje al Libro is his most prominent presence in the city, but not his only one. El Toro, one of his most recognised iron sculptures, has a permanent home at the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, as part of the outdoor sculpture museum that spans the university’s campus — one of the largest open-air collections in Spain.
