After a two-year restoration, eighteen modernist cast-concrete horse sculptures by Costantino Nivola (1911-1988) have returned to their original location at the Wise Towers playground on New York’s Upper West Side. These sculptures are part of a public art project executed by the artist in 1964 in collaboration with architect Richard Stein.
In the spring of 2021, the Nivola Museum in Orani, Sardinia, reported that the artist's horse sculptures at Wise Towers were abruptly and violently removed by inexperienced workers who were brought in to fix a water leak beneath the playground's installation area. This was done as part of a larger urban redevelopment project aimed at renovating the Wise Towers housing and pedestrian area.
The repair process involved removing the sculptures made by Nivola using his unique technique of sand-casting, which he first used in 1953 for the decoration of Morse and Ezra Stiles Colleges at Yale University.
A sledgehammer was used to saw off the legs of the horses, while the hooves remained fixed to the floor.
Costantino Nivola. Stephen Wise Recreation Area, New York. Credit: Fondazione Nivola
Costantino Nivola. Stephen Wise Recreation Area, New York. Credit: Fondazione Nivola
Costantino Nivola. Stephen Wise Recreation Area, New York. Credit: Fondazione Nivola
Costantino Nivola. Stephen Wise Recreation Area before the damage, New York.
Credit: The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture Archive
Costantino Nivola. Stephen Wise Recreation Area in 2021, after the damage.
Credit: Zachary Small - The New York Times
Fortunately, after a prompt activism, the Nivola Foundation and Nivola's heirs, along with the support from the Cooper Union School of Architecture, were able to quickly reach an agreement with the Pacts Renaissance Collective (the company in charge of the redevelopment works) to restore and reintegrate the modernist sculptures back into their original environment.
The complex restoration work was conducted under the supervision of Edward G. Fitzgerald of Jablonski Building Conservation, Inc, an architectural conservation firm specializing in the preservation of historic buildings and monuments.
Fitzgerald asked the contractors to remove all the embedded feet and documented their condition meticulously. The feet recovered by landscape contractors were in worse condition than the horses, and he had to recreate the hooves, which was a challenging task since it was impossible to make a mould of the damaged parts.
While researching Nivola's public projects in the USA, the conservator found out that some fibreglass versions of the artist's horses were still being stored in a school located in Columbus, Indiana. The city is well-known for its large collection of modernist architecture.
Costantino Nivola's concrete sculptures in storage before restoration.
Credit: Jablonski Building Conservation
The silicone mould from the original fibreglass Nivola horses in Columbus, Indiana.
Credit: Jablonski Building Conservation.
To recreate the missing body parts, Fitzgerald and his team made a silicone mould from the fibreglass version in Columbus. They attached metal pieces to the concrete sculptures to anchor the missing parts and clamped the silicone mould onto each of them. Then they filled the replacement parts with a mixture of foam and clay to match the sculptures' proportions more precisely. Once the missing body parts, including tails and noses that had been chopped off by vandals earlier in life, were recreated, the silicone mould was removed.
Costantino Nivola made significant contributions to Twentieth-century international art as a painter, muralist, sculptor, graphic designer, and ceramist in both the United States and Italy.
The artist adopted sand-casting as a technique to incorporate sculpture into architectural spaces. By casting concrete into specially moulded sand, he was able to create bas-reliefs that were not just mere decorations, but rather an essential and integral aspect of the construction process.
From Le Corbusier - whom he met in 1946, a few years after he was forced to flee to the USA to escape racial persecution as his wife was Jewish - Nivola learned the importance of each element in fulfilling a plastic function and its relationship with architecture.
It’s wonderful news that the little horses of the Wise Towers have been successfully restored and are now back in place in their original colours (white, black and grey). People of all ages can now enjoy this beloved community art installation along with other components such as the graffiti on the wall, the two fountain pyramids, and the two three-dimensional sculptures on 90th Street. Nivola's organic project at Wise Towers is the largest art installation ever built by the artist for the city of New York.
Costantino Nivola. Stephen Wise Recreation Area, New York. Credit: Fondazione Nivola
Costantino Nivola. Stephen Wise Recreation Area after restoration, New York 2023. Credit: Fondazione Nivola
Costantino Nivola. Stephen Wise Recreation Area, New York. Credit: Fondazione Nivola