Station # 6
Tower of the Winds
Uruguay

Gonzalo Fonseca
(1922 - 1997)

Gonzalo Fonseca was born in Montevideo and lived in the United States.  He studied architecture and was an apprentice to Joaquín Torres García, promoter of American Universal Constructivism.  He travelled throughout South America to study pre-Colombian cultures, afterwards settling down in Paris where he made works of art in painting, ceramic and murals.  In the United States he worked on projects integrating art with architecture.  He represented Uruguay in the Biennial of Venice in 1990.  His art is part of the permanent collections in the Brooklyn Museum and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museum of Art in Portland, Oregon, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Caracas, among others.

Unlike the other sculptures that make up the Route of Friendship, the Tower of the Winds is a habitable sculpture that includes the idea of the active spectator when it comes to recreating movement inside space. On the inside, there’s a space of 80m2 with a minimalistic aspect occupied by geometric elements that make reference to the furniture inside a home. On the outside, countless objects bring us back to Fonseca’s archeological years, even the Tower itself has the shape of a 13 meter high grain silo reinforced in concrete cast with RHS beams at its core.  Its average life expectancy approaches thousands of years because of the strength of its construction.

This sculpture was restored with the help of FONCA in 1996 and since then has served as an experimental laboratory for contemporary art.  Currently, the Tower of the Winds is the heart of the Cultural Program for the Route of Friendship.

Location: Periférico Sur (North-South direction) in front of Centro Comercial Perisur