The S-Printing Horse is said to be the largest horse sculpture in the world. It seems to have left two footprints or rather hoofprints in the pavement in front of the Print Media Academy, so when you come out of the central train station in Heidelberg you could cross the street and have a look.
The S-Printing Horse in Heidelberg
According to its website, the S-Printing Horse is made of stainless steel and aluminum. It is 13 meters high, 15 meters long and weighs 90 tons. It was created by Jürgen Goertz from 1998 to 2000, and was assembled here over a period of several weeks starting in February 2000. It is called the S-Printing Horse because it is both printing and sprinting.
The Horse’s Hoof
Here is the underside of one of the hoofs of the S-Printing Horse. This is the hoof that seems to be printing things every time the horse takes a step.
The Print Media Academy (PMA)
The Print Media Academy used to describe itself as “A Forum for the Graphic Arts Industry.” It was opened in the year 2000 to celebrate the 150th birthday of its owner, the Heidelberg Printing Machine Company (Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG) and is in a modern all-glass building directly across from the central train station in Heidelberg.
There is an auditorium on the ground floor and several seminar rooms on the 3rd, 4th and 5th floors. Also inside the building there are two gleaming silver “printing cylinder towers” which contain round seminar rooms with all the latest media.
Until around 2015, seminars in English and German were held here regularly for people in the printing industry. From 2015 to 2020, the company gradually moved its production and administrative departments to the town of Wiesloch/Walldorf, some 13 km south of Heidelberg, and in 2021 they sold the PMA building to an investment company from Luxembourg.
Passion for Print
Back in 2004 the Heidelberg Printing Machine Company ran a series of poster-advertisements under the title “Passion for Print”. This particular one was stretched across one entire wall of the foyer in the Heidelberg central station when I arrived there. They have enlarged a small square to show that the pixels are in the shape of hearts.
Other posters in this series were Car, Coffee cup, Surfer and Sunrise. Most of these used to be available as wallpaper for your computer screen just by clicking on the company’s website, but not any longer.
My photos in this post are from 2004. I revised the text in 2022.
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Amazing indeed. 😯
Fabulous
So interesting!
I hadn’t heard of this – it looks huge and very impressive!
The largest horse sculpture in the world…now there’s an odd claim
So far nobody has objected to this claim, as far as I know.
Very interesting Nemorino–we also love outdoor sculptures. It’s ages since we were in Heidelberg , so this came after we were last there. I really enjoy your posts, even if I don’t always comment.
Such an amazing horse sculpture
WOW I
Love this. There’s a great Picasso horse sculpture in Chicago. Most interesting is one in France I mentioned in a blog as, “Drove home via A85 passing a giant horse sculpture that turned out to be “Archeval” by Christian Renonciat and at 12 meters high, the largest equestrian statue in the world.” Obviously it is not since yours is 13 meters tall. Since the French statue has the appearance of a wire sculpture, it has got to be much lighter than yours. I wonder how many “largest” horse scriptures there are?
“Archeval” is certainly a great name for a horse statue, even if it isn’t quite the largest in the world. I imagine there have been more statues of horses than any other animal, but in former times they always had people like generals, presidents or archbishops riding on them..