Jeddah Sculpture "The Seagull"

Mustafa Senbel is the Egyptian artist credited for creating "The Seagull," one of the world's largest sculptures.  He was an urban planner for the city of Jeddah in the late 1970s and early 1980s at the height of Jeddah's Beautiful Project. During this time period Senbel designed more than 25 sculptures for the city, making him one of the most prolific producers of public art in Jeddah.  

With the implementation of Jeddah's new waterfront project, the location of this huge monument is still in the same place, but its surroundings are totally different now.  It is no longer in the center of what used to be one of Jeddah's biggest traffic circles.  Now it is next to an attractive lush boulevard and its enormous size is accentuated by how it now dwarfs the nearby palm trees.

The Seagull soars an incredible 55 meters into the sky and took three years to complete.  It represents a seagull diving into the water.  This work of art appears different from every angle and features poetry on the back side of four popular Saudi poets. It is constructed of marble and concrete.   To learn more about this sculpture, see this previous post I wrote a few years ago which shows it from the other direction and in its previous setting.

To see more of the beautiful art that sculptor Mustafa Senbel made for the city of Jeddah, here are more of my posts featuring his work:  The Seagull; The Fisherman’s Net; The Wave; and Dialogue.