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Soaring to the heights

The 20-foot-high web of interlocking bronze curves is located at 15th Street and South Penn Square across from City Hall.

Triune, a sculpture by Robert Engman, was installed on the Ben Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia in 1975.
Triune, a sculpture by Robert Engman, was installed on the Ben Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia in 1975.Read moreJOSE F. MORENO / Staff Photographer

Sculptor Robert M. Engman once called Triune “the biggest thing” he had ever done.

The towering 20-foot-tall work, located at 15th Street and South Penn Square across from Philadelphia City Hall, took Engman 18 months to complete.

Engman, who died in 2018 at 91, was cochair of the Department of Fine Arts and the chair of the graduate studies program in sculpture during his tenure at the University of Pennsylvania. He has a number of works in the Philadelphia area including After Iyenger, a mobile in Penn’s Chemistry Building, and After B.K.S. Iyenger at Morris Arboretum. He also collaborated with Penn students on The Peace Symbol, which is located in front of Van Pelt-Dietrich Library.