Quit Horsing Around: Ten Things You Need to Know About Blucifer

From the moment “Mustang” reared its ugly, red-eyed head on the prairie, everyone became a critic. Some people loved Luis Jimenez’s giant horse; others loathed it. It quickly acquired nicknames — Blucifer, Blue Demon, Demon Horse — and an international reputation.

But now, as Denver International Airport marks its thirtieth anniversary, “Mustang” is as iconic as that tent roof — and perhaps even more emblematic of not just the airport, but the city of Denver.

At a gathering in mid-February, seventeen years after the statue was installed thirteen years late, airport CEO Phil Washington concluded his remarks about the Great Hall’s anticipated construction completion with this: “Blucifer is going to stay out here as long as I do. I don’t want to be cursed.”

With that settled, here are ten more things you need to know about Blucifer:

The killer horse

1. The 32-foot-high fiberglass horse’s official name is “Mustang.” Luis Jiménez won a $300,000 commission to create the piece in the first, $7 million round of public art approved for the still-in-the-works Denver International Airport, in accordance with the city’s one-percent-for-art policy regarding construction budgets.

2. Despite its blue and orange (the light from those glowing eyes!) color scheme, the statue has absolutely nothing to do with the Denver Broncos. The artist, who lived in New Mexico, was inspired by the wild mustangs that used to roam the Southwest. Some of the early sketches showed “Mustang” as yellow, even pink, but ultimately Jiménez went with blue.

3.Yes, “Mustang” actually killed its creator, solidifying its nickname of Blucifer. Like the airport that was to be graced by his statue, the artist missed the completion date. And then missed it again. After the airport sued, the then-65-year-old artist got cracking. Jiménez was working on “Mustang” in his studio in 2006 when a piece of the statue cracked off, severing an artery in his leg. Jiménez bled to death, and his sons and studio ultimately finished the piece, which was installed on February 11, 2008 — more than fifteen years after it was commissioned. By then, the cost had doubled, to $650,000.

4. Initially, the plan was for a park to surround “Mustang,” with benches where art fans could sit and contemplate the work. Security in the wake of 9/11 put the kibosh on that.

5. The inability to get up close and personal with “Mustang” might be just as well, since the horse possesses a very graphic genital area, as The Colbert Report pointed out in a hilarious piece about all the phallic symbolism at Denver International Airport.

6. Less than a year after it was installed, there was a move to put Blucifer out to pasture. Local realtor Rachel Hultin created a Facebook page, “DIA’s Heinous Blue Mustang Has Got to Go,” that requested signatures demanding its banishment and asking for mean haikus, including this: Denver: true cow town/ A monstrous, evil blue horse/ It should be knocked down. The resulting mess made the front page of the Wall Street Journal, but “Mustang” stayed in place, because a piece of public art has a five-year grace period before the city will consider removing it.

Love it or loathe it

7. Blucifer made Travel + Leisure‘s list of the “World’s Ugliest Public Art” in December 2011. “Between unmanned check-in kiosks, overpriced sandwiches, and stressful security lines, the modern airport holds much that’s unpleasant, but to our knowledge only DIA makes you face down a 32-foot, darker-than-a-Smurf hell beast,” John Rambow wrote. “The rearing, 4.5-ton fiberglass horse seems poised to stomp on innocent travelers just trying to leave town. All joking aside, the statue really is a killer — its creator, Luis Jiménez, died when a section fell on him in his studio.”

8. Beyond the very true story about “Mustang” killing its creator, there’s another conspiracy theory involving “Mustang”: It looks very similar to the horse on the cover of The Montauk Project, a book about a government experiment during World War II that sent servicemen spiraling through the past and into the future. As the plot would have it, during one mission, U.S. troops landed in 2600, where they came upon a ruined city with the remains of a massive sculpture of a blue horse. (Think the end of Planet of the Apes, but with “Mustang” instead of the Statue of Liberty.)

9. The artist was sued over failing to deliver “Mustang,” but the artist’s estate has sued people, too. In late 2023, Abstract Denver received a letter from the Artists Rights Society, which represents the estate of Luis A. Jiménez Jr., claiming that assorted versions of Blucifer on T-shirts and stickers sold at its stores violated intellectual property rights. Although other attorneys would argue that depictions of Blucifer — including one in which the Blue Devil Horse fights the Big Blue Bear — are fair use, given the fact that these are pieces of public art, Abstract Denver stopped printing the works rather than get involved in a long legal fight. “We’re celebrating it, not stealing it,” sighed Dave Roggeman, one of the company’s owners. “That’s the whole reason we started this business…we got tired of seeing the Colorado flag on everything. Denver is so much cooler than the Colorado flag. And ours are designed by Colorado artists and printed here in Colorado.”

10. A funny thing has happened in the years since “Mustang” was installed. It has become uniquely ours, a symbol of this city — like it or not (see our “Mustang” paper doll here). When the airport conducted a public art survey in the fall of 2011, preparatory to another big round of art commissions for another construction project, it found that “Mustang” was far and away the best-known piece of art at the airport. Although feelings were divided between those who loved it and those who loathed it, just about everyone surveyed had an opinion. And in inspiring that amount of thought alone, “Mustang” has done its job as a piece of public art.

Do you love or loathe “Mustang,” aka Blucifer? Share your thoughts at editorial@westword.com.