The trace of Chillida
The trace of Chillida
Known as the genius of iron, the most renowned Basque artist of all time left his mark all throughout the San Sebastian Region – one of the historical territories of the Basque Country. We will take a journey through the artist’s most significant places so as to understand the complexity and magnitude of his legacy.
Chillida Leku
Chillida Leku is a museum dedicated to the artist’s work and located in an estate in Hernani. The museum explains Chillida’s professional life through 40 large sculptures displayed in its gardens, as well as with smaller pieces exhibited in the building’s interior. It is comprised of set of works made in iron, steel, alabaster, granite, terracotta, plaster, paper, and wood that show the discourse created by Eduardo Chillida – a discourse that was his own yet, at the same time, universal.
Chillida Lantoki
Located in Legazpi, in the heart of the “Valle del Hierro” (“Iron Valley”), Chillida Lantoki is an old paper mill that was converted into a museum to recreate the place where the artist did his monumental steel sculptures – sculptures that came to life in Patricio Echeverria’s foundry, just a few meters away. This old factory reveals the relationship between art and the iron industry. Visitors are shown the paper and iron workshops, as well as the Great Industry Foundry’s equipment.
The Comb of the Wind
The Comb of the Wind, the most well-known piece by Chillida, is in one of the busiest areas of San Sebastian and acts as an emblem for the city. The piece’s true name is, in reality, The Comb of the Wind XV, as it is part of a series of creations that the sculptor began in the year 1952. This was a long process in which Chillida created several works, such as several smaller-scale drawings and sculptures that later culminated in the creation of the monumental sculpture set in 1977. The square that surrounds the piece was designed by the architect Luis Peña Ganchegui and is vital thereto, serving as an introduction to the majestic piece. For Chillida, the beauty of the Comb of the Wind was the combination of the surroundings, the sea, and his sculpture – all of which, together, create the perfect picture.
The material was strategically chosen to stand up to erosion from the sea and the wind. The three pieces ruggedly stick out from the rocks, facing the immensity of the Cantabrian Sea. Their position also has been fully thought out: the two nearest the coast are placed in parallel, as if they were holding a dialog between each other and the past that binds them, while the third is placed vertically at the end of the rocks, gazing toward the uncertainty of the future.
In the square, there is a system of tubes which leads the air generated by the waves to the surface, only to come out of one end of the tubes through holes located in the ground. These holes make a unique sound, and the days when there are many waves –when the sea splashes forcefully against the coast– water sometimes goes into the tubes, coming forcefully out to the surface through the holes.
The doors of the Sanctuary of Arantzazu
Chillida also designed the doors of the Sanctuary of Arantzazu, located in Oñati. This religious temple is one of the most well known in Ignatian Land, within the San Sebastian Region, and it is a place where the most representative examples of contemporary Basque art come together.
In 1954, those in charge of the Church of Arantzazu hired Chillida to create the religious building’s access doors. The artist himself defined the project in the following way: “I wanted to add a symbol of poverty to the work done for the Sanctuary, of the Franciscan order, so as to communicate with the spirit of Saint Francis, a wonderful being. And I used the circle to symbolize the sun and pay tribute to his work, Canticle of the Sun.”
Freshly arrived from Paris, and after his contact with the European Avant-Garde, Chillida set up residence in Hernani. “This is where I discovered who I was. One day, by chance, I noticed that in front of my house there was a foundry, and I discovered that dark, distant, and primitive world. There, I discovered iron pounded out with a hammer,” explained Chillida. That iron, raw and burning from the forge, is what he used to create the temple’s four access doors. Doors that are nearly sunken into the earth after descending a steep staircase and which allude to entry into the underground world. A metallic collage is formed by the overlaying of pieces of sheet metal with different degrees of burnishing. The horizontal and vertical layouts of the sheets of iron, superimposed atop each other, create a space of pure geometric patterns. The doors represent a sober, rational, and abstract piece whose only references seem to be the sun and the moon.
To make them, Chillida picked up scrap materials and industrial waste from the Zumaia Port, as well as some sheet metal from a metalworking company. The materials used represent the poverty and austerity that are typical of the Franciscan order. The artist did not aim to make doors on which sculptures would be placed; instead, he aimed for the doors themselves to be the sculptures. Not everyone was aware of that duality, and perhaps that’s why the doors –along with the stained glass windows– were the only pieces of art that were able to be completed in 1955 without problems, getting around the authorities’ ban.
It is in Oñati that this tour around the San Sebastian Region to follow the trail of Eduardo Chillida concludes – a tour created to better understand the legacy of this great Basque genius.
Eduardo Chillida
sansebastianregion.com
museochillidaleku.com
