Eduardo Chillida: 100 years of artistic excellence
Eduardo Chillida: 100 years of artistic excellence
Eduardo Chillida was born in San Sebastián 100 years ago, in 1924. Before turning his attention to drawing and studying at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, he enrolled in Architecture at the University of Madrid, studies which he subsequently abandoned.
In 1948, he moved to Paris after receiving a scholarship from the famous Colegio de España (College of Spain), located at the Cité Internationale Universitaire. It was there where, after being impressed by the ancient Greek sculptures in the Louvre, he made his first pieces in plaster. Sculptures from this early stage, such as “Torso” (1948), showcase Chillida’s reflections on the human form and the natural world. But, shortly thereafter, the artist would banish these forms from his practice and prohibit himself from contemplating art from Greek and Roman Antiquity for more than a decade, doing so in an effort to focus on non-figurative work, related to geometry and matter.
Chillida’s initial interest in architecture would have a long-lasting effect on his development as an artist, his understanding of spatial relationships, and –in particular– his desire to make space visible by taking into account the forms that surround it. The year 1950 was the date of his first exhibition, entitled “Les mains Éblouis,” at the Maeght Gallery and it marked the beginning of his long-lasting relationship with his friend and gallery owner Aimé Maeght.
Upon his return to Spain in 1951, he began to experiment with materials that had strong resonance in the industrial heritage of the Basque region – materials like iron, wood, and steel. Chillida settled in Hernani with his wife, Pilar Belzunce, and right in front of their house there was a forge. Fascinated, the artist began to go there every night to learn the trade from blacksmith Manuel Illarramendi and that is how his relationship with metal began – a material that was extremely relevant in his career. Likewise, at this time he began to explore etching techniques, producing his first etched piece entitled “Glissement de limites” (1952). He additionally continued to make collages, and this fundamental sphere of his artistic practice would continue throughout his career, allowing him to explore shapes and lines through paper cutouts. His technique was expanded in the mid-1980s by a new form of exploration: Chillida’s so-called “Gravitations,” in which the artist did not use glue but instead created a kind of relief on paper where space was the protagonist – unlike the collage.
Chillida is extremely famous for his way of going about monumental public works. His first major commission came at the beginning of his career when, in 1954, he created the four entrance gates of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Aránzazu in Oñate. Another important public commission was a monument to Sir Alexander Fleming which he did for the city of San Sebastián – but it was never installed.
The year 1958 was key for Chillida in terms of exhibitions, as he represented Spain at the Venice Biennale and received the Grand International Prize for Sculpture, the first of the numerous awards and public recognitions he would receive throughout his career. It was also the year he exhibited for the first time at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York as part of “Sculpture and Drawings from Seven Sculptors.” At that time, Chillida began a sculpture series entitled “Rumor de límites” (“Rumor of Limits”), whose pieces were carved in iron and steel. In these sculptures, the geometric elements transform into structures that defy gravity – something which gives them both a sculptural and architectural nature. In reality, these totems have their origin in drawing and, together with the “Ikaraundi” series of 1957, this body of work emerged from gestural, minimal, abstract drawings that Chillida produced in the mid-1950s.
In 1963, during a trip to Paris, the sculptor made a revealing visit to the Louvre Museum, where contemplation of the hand of the Winged Victory of Samothrace brought him to regain interest in classical art and human forms. As a result of this rediscovery, he decided to travel to Greece and undertook a period of exploration with numerous trips to Umbria, Rome, Tuscany, and Provence. Consequently, an interest in the interaction between light and architecture was sparked inside Chillida – an interest which would never abandon him. This led him to start working with alabaster, a material that attracted the artist because of its translucent and luminous qualities. The first piece he created with this material was “Homenaje a Kandinsky” (“Homage to Kandinsky” – 1965).
Throughout his career, he created pieces as tributes to various figures that he respected and admired. His tributes are classified into three groups: he dedicated pieces to artists such as Constantin Brâncusi, Alexander Calder, and Joan Miró; to musicians such as Johann Sebastian Bach and Antonio Vivaldi; and to philosophers and poets such as Martin Heidegger, Emil Cioran, and Pablo Neruda.
The artist’s engagement with philosophers and writers began in 1956 when Gaston Bachelard wrote an essay entitled “Le Cosmos du Fer” about Chillida’s early wrought iron pieces that were presented at the Maegth Gallery in Paris. Later, in 1968, the sculptor met German philosopher Martin Heidegger and, a year later, collaborated with him on an illustrated version of his text “Die Kunst Und Der Raum.” Both conceived space as a material medium for relational contact and understood sculpture as a way of expressing the place of each human being in the world.
In fact, the concept of “place” was fundamental in Chillida’s monumental public work. An emblematic commission for the artist was his “Peine del viento XV” (“Comb of the Wind XV”), installed in 1977 in San Sebastián (architect Luis Peña Ganchegui participated in the design of the “Peine del viento XV” square, alongside Chillida). The piece rises above the waves at the western end of La Concha Bay and consists of three large pieces of steel (weighing 11 tons each) embedded in the rocks. Chillida conceived this piece of art in relation to the horizon and the sea – two elements that were recurring themes throughout his career.
Among his many public commissions, other innovative projects include his collaboration with Luis Peña Ganchegui to create the Los Fueros Square in Vitoria-Gasteiz, as well as the monument “Gure aitaren etxea” (1988) installed in Gernika. In 1987 the city of Barcelona commissioned “Elogio del agua” (“Praise of Water”) for the Creueta del Coll Park. There, Chillida suspended a sculpture over a pool of water, defying gravity. Even when he worked with monumental proportions, his sculptures retained an elegance that hid their weight, as is the case of his public commission for the Federal Chancellery in Berlin.
Eduardo Chillida’s work has been the subject of numerous international exhibitions and retrospective shows, such as those at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (1966), the Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh (1979), the National Gallery of Art in Washington (1979), the Guggenheim Museum in New York (1980), the Miramar Palace in San Sebastián (1992), the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid (1999), and the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin (1991).
Chillida received numerous awards both nationally and internationally. He was the recipient of the Grand International Prize for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale (1958), the Kandinsky Prize (1960), the Carnegie Prize for Sculpture (1964), the Goethe Foundation’s Rembrandt Prize (1984), the Andrew Mellon Award (1978, alongside Willem de Kooning), the Grand Prix des Arts et Letres of France (1984), the Orden pour le Mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste (1987), the Japanese Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale (1991), and the Jack Goldhill Award of the Royal Academy of Arts in London (1996), among others.
This year, to mark the occasion of the centenary of his birth, numerous commemorative initiatives will be carried out both locally and internationally. At the beginning of the year, an exhibition that pays tribute to the Fondation Marguerite et Aimé Maeght (founded in 1964 by Aimé Maeght and a group of artists in collaboration) can be visited at Chillida Leku, celebrating creative spirit and utopian freedom.
Also coinciding with Telefónica’s centenary in 2024, in May an exhibition will open at Chillida Leku featuring pieces by Chillida belonging to the Telefónica Collection (which has an impressive selection of monumental sculptures from the 1980s and 1990s – an iconic period for large-scale sculptures).
In summer, two exhibitions dedicated to the artist will open in San Sebastián: “Chillida y la cultura escultórica de su tiempo (1950-1979)” (“Chillida and the Sculptural Culture of his Time”) at San Telmo Museoa; and the sculptor’s legacy will be explored at Tabakalera, combining new productions with works of reflection that aim to invite us to imagine Chillida’s art from a contemporary point of view.
On the international level, “Eduardo Chillida y Anthony Caro. Dos artistas en diálogo” (“Eduardo Chillida and Anthony Caro: Two Artists in Dialog”) can be visited until October 24 at the Würth Museum in Künzelsau, Germany; and from March 1 to June 20, the Catholic University of Chile will dedicate an exhibition to the artist in Santiago de Chile.
In 2024, a memoir written by Susana Chillida (the artist’s daughter) about her parents will also be published, in which personal and family memories are compiled that allow us to better understand the artist, his environment, and his most intimate sphere which made it possible for him to advance his career. And a documentary about Chillida Leku produced by A Contracorriente Films and Bixagu Entertainment will likewise be released.
These exhibitions, premieres, and publications are only a small fragment of the great collage that will be the centenary of Eduardo Chillida, one of the most relevant figures in the history of art.
Eduardo Chillida
Photograph: Mikel Chillida.
