Navarre Heritage and Art Chair
open classroom
Itineraries and visits
The memorial in Pamplona
Monument to the bull run
Bull Run Monument
Author: Rafael Huerta Celaya.
Materials and technique: Patinated bronze on a granite and reinforced concrete platform.
Measurements: 1,100 x 400 cm.
Location: Avenida de Roncesvalles, at its confluence with Avenida de Carlos III.
Installation date: April 21, 2007 (inauguration).
The bull run monument, which since the moment of its inauguration in 2007 has become one of the main hallmarks of the city, has an extensive historical journey that begins in 1991 and culminates in 2007 with the execution by Rafael Huerta of the definitive project, within the framework of the pedestrianization and beautification process of Avenida de Carlos III.
The sculptural group is made up of nineteen figures - six bulls inspired by Victorino Martín's iron, three halters and ten runners - that immortalize in patinated bronze a snapshot of the fast race as it passed through the section of Estafeta Street, whose cobbled floor on a slight slope it simulates the surface of the monument. The group collects the various incidents that occur in the running of the bulls, from the young men who open the race and pull the herd, to those who have already been passed by it, without forgetting the runners who have fallen on the ground - one of them a self-portrait. of the artist - and towards those who defeat the horned ones. It sits on a reinforced concrete platform covered with tiles identical to the floor of Avenida de Carlos III.
The Biscayan sculptor Rafael Huerta demonstrates his ability to capture a precise moment, posing the sculptural group as if it were a snapshot of his career, whose overall composition responds to the plastic need to express action and offer the viewer multiple points of view. view. Added to all this is his technical ability in balancing volumes, evident especially in the herd of bulls and halters; To achieve this difficult play of masses, the artist welds the figures together, in such a way that while the sculptural group gains cohesion, it also achieves plastic lightness, greater realism, expressiveness and tension. This can be seen in a look at the race at cobblestone level, which shows all the tension of the herd in full gallop.