The Mustangs of Las Colinas

In the Las Colinas district of Irving, a fountain plaza holds what is recognized as one of the largest equestrian sculptures in the world, made by an African wildlife artist, Robert Glen.

The Mustangs of Las Colinas consists of nine bronze mustang horses at one-and-a-half times life size, cast in a full gallop through a shallow granite watercourse. Water jets from the pavement simulate the spray of hooves hitting a stream. The horses are caught in motion, manes back, legs extended, every muscle implied in the bronze, and the effect, particularly when the water is running, reads less like sculpture than like something you interrupted.

The work was commissioned in nineteen seventy-six as the centerpiece of Williams Square, a corporate office development in the newly planned Las Colinas Urban Center. The Las Colinas project was itself a remarkable undertaking, a master-planned mixed-use district built on what had been ranchland outside Dallas, intended from its inception in the nineteen seventies to function as an urban center with canals, plazas, and office towers where none had existed before.

The sculptor Robert Glen, known primarily for his African wildlife bronzes, developed the Mustangs over the years after the commission. He worked at one-and-a-half scale to ensure the piece would read at plaza distance without losing anatomical detail. The finished sculpture was installed in nineteen eighty-four.

The Mustangs remain. A museum in the adjacent building houses the original maquettes, process photography, and a film about the casting, giving visitors who want to understand the making of a major public sculpture as much material as they could reasonably absorb. The horses themselves make the strongest argument.