The Strassacker art foundry created the largest bronze horse sculpture in the world. “The bronze statue Pegasus & Dragon was already one of the greatest challenges in our company’s history, which spans close to a century. When the first sketches of Pegasus & Dragon arrived in Süßen for review around three years ago, we looked at it in disbelief,” recollects Edith Strassacker and Günter Czasny, respectively presiding managing director and deputy managing director of the family-owned company that employs 500 members of staff. The German company curated the complete processing of small-scale and complex art projects from conceptualisation through coordination of the artists, architects, authorities and companies involved, right through to the final assembly stage.
The sculpture was being constructed close to Hallandale Beach in Gulfstream Park, in Miami, Florida. The 33-metre-high metal structure that gleams in the sun and that took up to 100 workers to create, all of them working in tandem, was the talk of the town on the legendary U.S. Highway 1 that runs the length of the East Coast of the USA.
The result that emerged upon conclusion of construction in November 2014 is no less spectacular. What came into being here after eight months of construction is the world’s largest horse sculpture and one of the largest bronze statues ever made: 33 metres high, 35 metres wide and 60 metres long, mounted on a 400-tonne steel skeleton, composed of no fewer than 1,250 handcrafted bronze elements, with a total weight of a further 250 tonnes, intricately worked by experienced artisans. The sculpture Pegasus & Dragon represents the eternal battle between good and evil. Pegasus, the winged horse from Greek mythology, conquers the dragon. The mythical creature soaring up from a rock formation pins the monster down with its front hoof.
A component of the total project amount – between 20 and 30 million U.S. dollars – the erected bronze sculpture forms the hub of a theme park in Gulfstream Park, which is to be located very close to the racecourse and is to open early in 2015. The initiator and commissioning party is the Austrian entrepreneur Frank Stronach. He owns Gulfstream Park and Hallandale Beach, and came up with the idea for the project. The quest for a firm that is capable of crafting a 33-metre-high bronze sculpture led Stronach to the town of Süßen in Baden-Württemberg, where the head office of Strassacker art foundry is located.
