DUANE
Duane's take
The marker tells it this way, and I'm just the one passin' it along. Now, if you've ever looked up at the mountains rimming El Paso and spotted that figure standing on the peak — arms wide, stone-still against the sky — you're already halfway into this story. That is Cristo Rey.
And the man who made it was Urbici Soler. Soler was a master sculptor, and he came up the long way. He started as an apprentice under artists in his native Spain — learning the weight of stone, the patience of a chisel.
From there he carried his craft across Germany, through southern Europe, down into South America, and on into Mexico. That is a life lived in motion, in marble dust and foreign cities, each place leaving something in the hands. Then came 1937, and El Paso.
Soler came to this desert mountain city to begin work on a single commission — a statue called Cristo Rey, placed on a mountain peak overlooking the city. Now, you think about what it takes to put a sculpture on a mountaintop. Not in a gallery.
Not in a plaza. On a peak. The scale of that ambition alone ought to stop you for a moment.
After that work, Soler stayed. He taught at the Texas College of Mines — the school now known as the University of Texas at El Paso — passing along to students whatever a lifetime across two continents and one mountain had taught him. And when his time came, Urbici Soler died in his home at the base of that same mountain.
The one he'd climbed. The one where Cristo Rey stands. Some men build things that outlast them in distant places.
Soler built his at the end of his own road, and never left its shadow.
What the marker says
A master sculptor, Urbici Soler apprenticed under artists in his native Spain before studying and working in Germany, southern Europe, South America, and Mexico. In 1937 he came to El Paso to begin work on the statue "Cristo Rey," which stands on a mountain peak overlooking the city. Soler later taught at the Texas College of Mines (now the University of Texas at El Paso) and died in his home at the base of the mountain upon which "Cristo Rey" was placed. Recorded - 1983