An unexpected side of Mexico City...

Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City - a miles long, tree-lined avenue where sculptures form a calming contrast to the roaring traffic.

Mexico City was in many was just what can be expected of one of world's largest metropolitan areas - vast, congested, crowded, noisy and filthy, full of decrepit buildings with dirty, rag-covered windows, and people begging and sleeping in gutters even in the wealthiest of area trying to carve out their daily living amongst millions of others in need. At the same time, it was all the opposites of the aforementioned: colorful, luxurious, tree-lined avenues lined with glorious houses, art and grand architectural monuments, and with smiling, effortlessly friendly people always ready to explain and help you further when needed.

A sculpture with a wonderfully soft organic form, with no plate about its name or creator...

What I found one of the most intriguing features of the city, was the amazing amount (do you say amount?) of sculpture on display everywhere in the city; by roadsides, in parks, in the middle of roundabouts - it felt like where ever my eyes wandered, there was a sculpture waiting to be discovered in the shadows of trees, forming proud focal point in the white sun, or drenched in the middle of water squirting fountains. Partly a deliberate and proud effort to display Mexican art and history, I still sensed that somewhere behind that official agenda, there must run an innate, deep love for the sculpted, chiseled, casted and modeled. Maybe, it is a living heritage of the earlier, ancient civilizations who carved their magnificent temples  filled with sculpted artwork on this same soil...

"Las Alas de la Ciudad" ("The Wings of the City") and"Equilibrista 90 monumental" by Jorge Marín, a young Mexican sculptor, whose classically influenced works are displayed on Paseo de la Reforma.