The Jose Artigas Staute was a surprise to me as I was on my way to a restaurant in the SOHO area in Manhattan. After further research I discovered who he was and this is what i found out. José Artigas was born on June 19, 1764 on the outskirts of Montevideo, then part of the Banda Oriental del Uruguay, in the Spanish Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. Artigas’ parents were criollos, and his family were landowners; it was on their estates that at a young age he earned the respect and admiration of the gauchos for his courage and strong character. In 1797 he became military commander of the Cuerpo de Blandengues, a Spanish force charged with getting rid the country of outlaws and smugglers.
The larger-than-life statue of Artigas in Soho Square is a second cast of an original by José Luis Zorrilla de San Martín (1891-1975), which has stood in Montevideo, in front of the Uruguayan National Bank, since 1949. Zorrilla served as Director of the Uruguayan National Museum of Fine Arts, and was then considered his country’s outstanding sculptor. His father, Juan Zorrilla de San Martín, was both a poet and Uruguay’s Ambassador to Spain. This replica was fabricated by Vignali and Company, and placed on a Uruguayan granite base designed by architect Maria Cristina Caquías.
Soho Square, in which the statue stands was one of several wedge-shaped public plazas created when Sixth Avenue was extended south of Carmine Street in the 1920s.
References
“SoHo Square.” SoHo Square Highlights : NYC Parks. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2016
