Station # 7
Man of Peace
Italy

Costantino Nivola
(1911 - 1988)

Costantino Nivola was born in Sardinia, Italy and lived in the United States.  He was a professor of Fine Arts at the Monza Institute in Milan, artistic director for the Olivetti Group in Italy, artistic director of different architecture publications in New York, director of the design studio at Harvard University and artistic professor at Columbia University.  He was the first non-American member admitted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1972.  He carried out applied sculpture and integrated architectural projects, as well as large mural paintings for which he used a new system of sand molding for bas-reliefs.

The sculpture that Nivola created for the Route was found in a state of semi-destruction for 35 years.  It was moved to the cloverleaf interchange of Insurgentes and Periférico in 2006 to return the piece to its vital state.  Man of Peace is made up of a pair of geometric bodies placed on top of one another, crowned with a figure that resembles a dove or a hand depending on the point of view it’s observed from.  Straight lines using the colors from the Italian flag predominate in this sculpture.  It stands 11 meters high and was constructed with reinforced concrete.  Currently, its surroundings were the first native garden that set the guidelines for the creation of 16 more areas of ecological restoration in the cloverleaf of Insurgentes and Periférico Sur.

It was moved in 2006 with the help of the Italian Embassy for the Sicilian Region, Engineer Adalberto Cortesi who with the collaboration of Engineer Franco Bonfanti initiated the creation of its garden, and since 2007 the sculpture and its garden is conserved by Pirelli, in collaboration with the green projects with Organización Techint.

Jardín Nativo del Pedregal: Ing. Adalberto Cortesi

Original Location: Periférico Sur (North-South direction) on land that made up the Olympic Village, sold afterwards

Current Location: Cloverleaf Interchange of Periférico and Insurgentes Sur, on Periférico
North-South direction