S-Printing Horse

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The S-Printing Horse in front of the Print Media Academy
Hoofprints of the S-Printing Horse
Night view

The S-Printing Horse in Heidelberg is 13 meters high and 90 tonnes in weight, one of the largest horse sculptures in the world, designed by the sculptor Jürgen Goertz . The sculptor's idea was implemented by Fröhlich Systemautomation GmbH special machine and fixture construction based in Treuchtlingen in Central Franconia .

The sculpture is made of stainless steel and aluminum and achieved its final shape through various processing methods (cast, sanded, polished and partly gold-plated, partly sprayed with metallic mica lacquer). It was manufactured by the contract manufacturer Kinkele in Ochsenfurt and brought to Heidelberg with six heavy loads.

The sculpture has stood on the forecourt of the Print Media Academy , an office and training building for Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG , since 2000 .

symbolism

The sculpture symbolizes different processes in a printing shop. The horse's eyes, which shine at night, stand for the scanning of the documents ( prepress ); the round body symbolizes the actual rotary printing process , which is monitored by the illustrated head of the printer; the horse's tail is a stylized book that stands for the further processing . These three processes are also symbolized in the horse's three legs, which leave several marks on the field. The horse also has suggested wings that allow it to gallop at high speeds (analogy to the claim of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG to build very fast printing machines). The horse's neck has several holes that correspond to the mountings of the bearings in the side walls of a printing press. At the very end, the viewer of the printed product can be seen. Other cast hoof prints of the sculpture are located in Amstetten (Württemberg) at the site of the foundry of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG and at the Ludwigsburg site, which is intended to give the impression that the sculpture started in Amstetten. Relief-like fossils are incorporated into the cast hoof prints, which also symbolize the reference to the Swabian Alb with its fossil sites. In addition to various realistic fossils, parts of the S-Printing Horse itself appear as "fossils" in the hoof prints.

criticism

Rolling Horse in Berlin

The sculptures S-Printing Horse and the sculpture Rolling Horse in Berlin were commissioned by companies whose CEO at the time the order was placed was Hartmut Mehdorn (Heidelberger Druck or Deutsche Bahn ). The Professional Association of Visual Artists Berlin criticized this after the establishment of Rolling Horse in May 2007 and pointed out that both sculptures are too similar.

Individual evidence

  1. Froehlich Sondermaschinen website - “Special Projects” section, accessed on August 23, 2016.
  2. Special edition of the magazine "Fertigungstechnik" May 2000
  3. Controversial horse sculpture: To neigh or to cry? Spiegel Online , May 31, 2007, accessed March 7, 2013 .

Coordinates: 49 ° 24 '18 "  N , 8 ° 40' 38"  E