The Torres de Satélite ("Satellite Towers") are a group of sculptures located in the

Ciudad Satélite Ciudad Satélite (), commonly known as Satélite, is a Greater Mexico City upper middle class suburban area located in Naucalpan, State of Mexico. Officially, the name corresponds exclusively to the homonym neighborhood, Ciudad Satélite, found ...

district of

Naucalpan Naucalpan, officially Naucalpan de Juárez, is one of 125 municipalities located just northwest of Mexico City in the adjoining State of Mexico. The municipal seat is the city of Naucalpan de Juárez, which extends into the neighboring municipal ...

State of Mexico The State of Mexico ( es, Estado de México; ), officially just Mexico ( es, México), is one of the 32 federal entities of the United Mexican States. Commonly known as Edomex (from ) to distinguish it from the name of the whole country, it is ...

. One of the country's first urban sculptures of great dimensions, had its planning started in 1957 with the ideas of renowned Mexican architect

Luis Barragán Luis Ramiro Barragán Morfín (March 9, 1902 – November 22, 1988) was a Mexican architect and engineer. His work has influenced contemporary architects visually and conceptually. Barragán's buildings are frequently visited by international ...

, painter

Jesús Reyes Ferreira Jesús Reyes Ferreira, (1880-1977) born José de Jesús Benjamín Buenaventura de los Reyes y Ferreira and also known as Chucho Reyes, was a self-taught artist and antiques/art collector and vendor. Reyes Ferreira began painting on crêpe paper, a d ...

and sculptor

Mathias Goeritz Werner Mathias Goeritz Brunner (4 April 1915, Danzig, German Empire – 4 August 1990, Mexico City) was a Mexican painter and sculptor of German origin. After spending much of the 1940s in North Africa and Spain, he and his wife, photographer ...

. The project was originally planned to be composed of seven towers, with the tallest one reaching a height of 200 meters (about 650 feet), but a budget reduction forced the design to be composed of only five towers, with the tallest measuring 52 meters (170 feet) and the shortest 30 meters (98 feet). Torres de Satélite en 1957

Goeritz originally wanted the towers to be painted in different shades of orange, but changed his mind later due to some pressure from constructors and investors. It was finally decided that there would be one tower each in red, blue and yellow, the primary subtractive colors, and two in white. Thus, in the first days of March 1958, the Satélite Towers were inaugurated as the symbol of the newborn and modern Ciudad Satélite.

In popular culture

The towers appear prominently in the surrealist film '' The Holy Mountain'' by

Alejandro Jodorowsky Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky (; born 17 February 1929) is a Chilean-French avant-garde filmmaker. Best known for his 1970s films ''El Topo'' and '' The Holy Mountain'', Jodorowsky has been "venerated by cult cinema enthusiasts" for his work ...

. The unnamed protagonist is hoisted up the red tower, which he then enters via a circular hole in its side (painted on for the purposes of the film). Within he encounters an Alchemist, and begins a metaphysical transformation.

References

External links

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Ayuntamiento de Naucalpan de Juárez
— ''Official website''. 1958 sculptures Architecture in Mexico History of the State of Mexico Landscape design history Modernist architecture in Mexico Satelite {{Mexico-struct-stub