Lanzarote´s landscape is enlivened by a series of large scale mobiles – or wind toys – created by the ubiqituous island born artist and architect César Manrique.
For visitors who like to discover everything their holiday destination has to offer, driving to and from some of the best-known attractions should take them past one of many ‘wind toys’, as their creator Manrique liked to call them.
These three dimensional moving sculptures allowed the artist to explore the relationship between art and nature to a much fuller degree, as he found working with canvas somewhat restrictive.
The first of these giant toys greets visitors as they arrive on the island, thanks to its location on the roundabout that filters traffic leaving the airport.
This steel construction is dedicated to his closest friend and confidante, Pepin Ramirez, who at the time of Manrique’s most prolific output, was the island’s president. Together they were able to steer Lanzarote’s development as a tourist destination with a difference and avoided many of the pitfalls that have blighted areas of Spain and the other Canary Islands.
In addition to giving Manrique another medium in which to work, the concept of these ‘juguetes de viento’ (wind toys) also pays homage to the island’s agricultural past, when windmills were employed for milling gofio (cornflour). And is an intelligent use of the climatic conditions that prevail in Lanzarote, where the Trade Winds are a fairly constant feature between March and August, ensuring that the mobiles are hardly ever stationary.
At the foot of Montaña Blanca, an area that is still predominantly used for agricultural purposes, another large scale mobile can be found. This is formed by concentric squares that move in opposite directions to each other and are painted in pale blue, red and green.
Whilst the small fishing village at Arrieta is signposted by a rust-red wind toy, which is without title, that pivots round on its axis, depending on which direction the wind is blowing from.
One of the most colourful wind toys, in red, blue, yellow, green and white and using three dimensional pyramid shapes, can be encountered at the Fundación César Manrique, just before visitors enter the house.
But perhaps the best known and most photographed mobile is the one adorning the roundabout by the Fundación César Manrique. This creation of spherical silver globes is called ‘Fobos’ and it stands 13 metres high. It’s made from painted, galvanised iron and despite its fragile appearance can withstand the gusts that move the intricately connected parts.
The mobile was in fact constructed and erected two years after Manrique’s death in 1992 and is accompanied by a miniature version of itself on the Costa Teguise exit road. Another full size Fobos can be seen in Arucas, Gran Canaria, where again it is used as a sculpture in the centre of a roundabout.
Fobos was the only wind toy to suffer from the tropical storm Delta that hit Lanzarote in November 2005, which saw the iconic mobile battered and bent out of shape. However, a year later it was back in place, having been carefully restored following Manrique’s intricate design. It will be making its debut at the cinema early in 2009, as several of the most important scenes in Pedro Almodovar’s new film, ‘Broken Embraces’, were filmed at the roundabout.
Elsewhere on the island, there are smaller versions of these wind toys, with several situated in Costa Teguise which are used to signpost the town. These mobiles serve as a reminder of Manrique’s input in the development of Costa Teguise as a holiday resort, even down to details such as the logo for the town and these examples of street sculptures.
