Eduardo Chillida
Encyclopedia
Basque language
Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
, (10 January 1924 – 19 August 2002) was a Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
Basque
Basque people
The Basques as an ethnic group, primarily inhabit an area traditionally known as the Basque Country , a region that is located around the western end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay and straddles parts of north-central Spain and south-western France.The Basques are known in the...
sculptor
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
notable for his monumental abstract works.
Early life and career
Born in San Sebastián to Pedro Chillida and the soprano Carmen Juantegui on 10 January 1924, Eduardo Chillida grew up near the Biarritz Hotel, which was owned by his grandparents. Chillida had been the goalkeeper for Real SociedadReal Sociedad
Real Sociedad de Fútbol, S.A.D. is a Spanish football club based in the city of San Sebastián, Basque Country, founded on 7 September 1909...
, San Sebastián
San Sebastián
Donostia-San Sebastián is a city and municipality located in the north of Spain, in the coast of the Bay of Biscay and 20 km away from the French border. The city is the capital of Gipuzkoa, in the autonomous community of the Basque Country. The municipality’s population is 186,122 , and its...
's football team, before studying architecture at the University of Madrid
University of Madrid
The Complutense University of Madrid is a public university in Madrid, Spain, and one of the oldest universities in the world.The University of Madrid may also refer to:* The Autonomous University of Madrid, a public university founded in 1968...
from 1943 to 1946. In 1947 he abandoned architecture for art, and the next year he moved to Paris, where he set up his first studio and began working in plaster and clay. He never finished his degree and instead began to take private art lessons. He lived in Paris from 1948 to 50 and at Villaines-sous-Bois
Villaines-sous-Bois
Villaines-sous-Bois is a commune in the Val-d'Oise department in Île-de-France in northern France.-References:** -External links:* * *...
(Seine-et-Oise) from 1950 to 1955. In 1950 Chillida married Pilar Belzunce and later returned to the San Sebastián area, first to the nearby village of Hernani and in 1959 to the city of his birth, where he remained.
He died at his home near San Sebastián at the age of 78.
Work
Chillida's earliest sculptures concentrated on the human form (mostly torsos and bustBust (sculpture)
A bust is a sculpted or cast representation of the upper part of the human figure, depicting a person's head and neck, as well as a variable portion of the chest and shoulders. The piece is normally supported by a plinth. These forms recreate the likeness of an individual...
s); his later works tended to be more massive and more abstract, and included many monumental public works. Chillida himself tended to reject the label of "abstract", preferring instead to call himself a "realist sculptor". Upon returning to the Basque country in 1951, Chillida soon abandoned the plaster he used in his Paris works – a medium suited to his study of archaic figurative works in the Louvre
Louvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
. Living near Hernani, he began to work in forged iron with the help of the local blacksmith, and soon set up a forge in his studio. From 1954 until 1966, Chillida worked on a series entitled Anvil of Dreams, in which he used wood for the first time as a base from which the metal forms rise up in explosive rhythmic curves. He began to make sculpture in alabaster 1965. Rather than turn over a maquette
Maquette
A maquette is a small scale model or rough draft of an unfinished architectural work or a sculpture...
of a sculpture to fabricators, as many modern artists do, Chillida worked closely with the men in the foundry. He then usually added an alloy that caused the metal to take on a brilliant rust color as it oxidizes.
From quite early on, Chillida's sculpture found public recognition, and, in 1954, he produced the four doors for the basilica of Arantzazu
Arantzazu
Arantzazu is a town and municipality located in the province of Biscay, in the Autonomous Community of Basque Country, northern Spain.-External links:*...
, where works by other leading Basque sculptors – Jorge Oteiza, Agustin Ibarrola and Nestor Basterretxea – were also being installed. The following year, he carved a stone monument to the discoverer of penicillin, Sir Alexander Fleming, for a park in San Sebastián (it subsequently disappeared, but a new version has been installed on the promenade at San Sebastián bay). By the early 1970s, his steel sculptures had been installed in front of the Unesco
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
headquarters in Paris, the Thyssen
Thyssen
See also variant spellings including Thiessen.Thyssen may refer to:*The Thyssen family, which has many notable members including:**Friedrich Thyssen**August Thyssen**Fritz Thyssen**Bodo Thyssen**Heinrich, Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon...
building in Düsseldorf, and in a courtyard at the World Bank
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...
offices in Washington
At their best his works, although massive and monumental, suggest movement and tension. For example, the largest of his works in the United States, De Musica is an 81-ton steel sculpture featuring two pillars with arms that reach out but do not touch. Much of Chillida's work is inspired by his Basque upbringing, and many of his sculptures' titles are in the Basque language Euskera. His steel sculpture De Música III was exhibited at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Yorkshire Sculpture Park
The Yorkshire Sculpture Park in West Bretton, Wakefield, in West Yorkshire, England is an open-air gallery showing work by UK and international artists, including Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth...
in the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, as part of a retrospective of Chillida's work.
Chillida also conceived a distinguished oeuvre of etching
Etching
Etching is the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio in the metal...
s, lithographs and woodcut
Woodcut
Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...
s since 1959, including illustrations for Jorge Guillen
Jorge Guillén
Jorge Guillén y Álvarez was a Spanish poet, a member of the Generation of '27.-Biography:Jorge Guillén was born in Valladolid. His life paralleled that of his friend Pedro Salinas, whom he succeeded as a Spanish teaching assistant at the Collège de Sorbonne in the University of Paris from 1917 to...
's Mas Alla (1973) and various other books.
Chillida Leku
In the 1990s, Chillida set up a foundation for the display of his work, at the Chillida Leku, centred on an old farmhouse, in the Basque countryside. Today there is an outdoor sculpture garden dedicated to his work.Monument to Tolerance, Fuerteventura
In 2011 local authorities decided to go ahead with a project by Chillida inside Mount Tindaya on FuerteventuraFuerteventura
Fuerteventura , a Spanish island, is one of the Canary Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa. It is situated at 28°20' north, 14°00' west. At 1,660 km² it is the second largest of the Canary Islands, after Tenerife...
despite concerns from environmentalists. According to Chillida's plan's, an artificial cave is to be bored into the mountain. The huge cubic cave, measuring 40 metres (131ft) along each side, is to be dug from inside a mountain that has long been revered by the inhabitants of the dusty, barren island to the south of Lanzarote
Lanzarote
Lanzarote , a Spanish island, is the easternmost of the autonomous Canary Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean, approximately 125 km off the coast of Africa and 1,000 km from the Iberian Peninsula. Covering 845.9 km2, it stands as the fourth largest of the islands...
. About 64,000 cubic metres of rock will be taken away from the mountain, which rises out of an arid landscape in the north of the island, to create what Chillida called his 'monument to tolerance'. Chillida's original idea was for visitors to experience the immensity of the space.
Dialogue with Heidegger
Eduardo Chillida in the early 1960s engaged into a dialog with the German Philosopher Martin HeideggerMartin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
. When the two men met, they discovered that from different angles, they were "working" with space in the same way. Heidegger wrote: "We would have to learn to recognize that things themselves are places and do not merely belong to a place," and that sculpture is thereby "...the embodiment of places." Against a traditional view of space as an empty container for discrete bodies, these writings understand the body as already beyond itself in a world of relations and conceive of space as a material medium of relational contact. Sculpture shows us how we belong to the world, a world in the midst of a technological process of uprooting and homelessness. Heidegger suggests how we can still find room to dwell therein.
Chillida has been quoted as saying: "My whole Work is a journey of discovery in Space. Space is the liveliest of all, the one that surrounds us. ...I do not believe so much in experience. I think it is conservative. I believe in perception, which is something else. It is riskier and more progressive. There is something that still wants to progress and grow. Also, this is what I think makes you perceive, and perceiving directly acts upon the present, but with one foot firmly planted in the future. Experience, on the other hand, does the contrary: you are in the present, but with one foot in the past. In other words, I prefer the position of perception. All of my work is the progeny of the question. I am a specialist in asking questions, some without answers."
Other philosophers who have written respectfully about Chillida and his works include Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard was a French philosopher. He made contributions in the fields of poetics and the philosophy of science. To the latter he introduced the concepts of epistemological obstacle and epistemological break...
and Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...
.
Exhibitions
Chillida exhibited his early work in 1949 in the Salon de Mai at the Musée d'Art ModerneMusée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris is the City of Paris Museum of Modern Art dedicated to the arts of the 20th/21st centuries. It is located at 11 Avenue du Président Wilson in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.-Description:...
in Paris, and the next year took part in "Les Mains Eblouies", a show of postwar art at the Galerie Maeght. After his first solo exhibition at the Clan Gallery in Madrid in 1954, Chillida exhibited his work in more than 100 one-man shows. He also participated in many international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
(1958, 1988 and 1990); the Pittsburgh International, where he received the Carnegie Prize for sculpture in 1964 and, in 1978, shared the Andrew W. Mellon Prize with Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands....
; and Documenta
Documenta
documenta is an exhibition of modern and contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. It was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau which took place in Kassel at that time...
II, IV and VI. His first comprehensive retrospective in the United States was mounted by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in 1966. Major retrospectives of Chillida’s graphic and sculptural work have since been mounted by the National Gallery
National gallery
The National Gallery is an art gallery on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom.National Gallery may also refer to:*Armenia: National Gallery of Armenia, Yerevan*Australia:**National Gallery of Australia, Canberra...
in Washington, D.C. (1979), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...
in New York (1980), Palacio de Miramar in San Sebastián (1992); and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía is the official name of Spain's national museum of 20th century art . The museum was officially inaugurated on September 10, 1992 and is named for Queen Sofia of Spain...
in Madrid (1999) and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain (1999).
Major public works
Major public works by Chillida are in Barcelona, Berlin, Paris, Frankfurt and Dallas. A large body of his work can be seen in San SebastiánSan Sebastián
Donostia-San Sebastián is a city and municipality located in the north of Spain, in the coast of the Bay of Biscay and 20 km away from the French border. The city is the capital of Gipuzkoa, in the autonomous community of the Basque Country. The municipality’s population is 186,122 , and its...
, including Haizeen orrazia (The comb of the wind) installed in the (often stormy) sea in La Concha bay at San Sebastián. Perhaps his best-known work in the United States is in front of the I.M. Pei-designed Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas. The work features two pillars with branches that reach out but do not touch. In Washington, a Chillida sculpture is inside the World Bank
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...
headquarters. A sculpture by Chillida also sits outside Beverly Hills City Hall. In 1986 he installed House of Goethe, a large piece that is a tribute to the German poet and dramatist, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...
, in the city of Frankfurt. His monument Diálogo-Tolerancia (Dialogue-Toerance) was installed in Münster in 1993 to celebrate the Peace of Westfalia.
Collections
Chillida's sculptures have been collected by major museums, including the Museum of Modern ArtMuseum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
and the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
in New York; the Tate Britain
Tate Britain
Tate Britain is an art gallery situated on Millbank in London, and part of the Tate gallery network in Britain, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is the oldest gallery in the network, opening in 1897. It houses a substantial collection of the works of J. M. W. Turner.-History:It...
in London; the Kunsthalle Basel
Kunsthalle Basel
Since opening in 1872, Kunsthalle Basel has examined various positions concerning contemporary art. This renowned exhibition space in the Swiss city of Basel has a very long tradition of supporting avant-garde artists and expanding the accepted boundaries of contemporary art. Contemporary art...
in Switzerland; and the Neue Nationalgalerie
Neue Nationalgalerie
Neue Nationalgalerie at the Kulturforum is a museum for modern art in Berlin, with its main focus on the early 20th century. It is part of the Nationalgalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin...
in Berlin. In 1986 the Chillida collection of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía is the official name of Spain's national museum of 20th century art . The museum was officially inaugurated on September 10, 1992 and is named for Queen Sofia of Spain...
in Madrid was inaugurated; Chillida designed the museum's logo.
Honours and awards
In 2002, Vitoria, the capital of the Basque country, awarded its gold medal, the city’s highest honor, posthumously to Chillida and the architect Luis Peña Ganchegui, for building a square that has come to symbolize Basque re-emergence following Spain’s return to democracy. Other honours include:- (1998) Recipient of the Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award,
International Sculpture Center
- (1987) Recipient of the Premio Príncipe de Asturias de las ArtePrince of Asturias AwardsThe Prince of Asturias Awards are a series of annual prizes awarded in Spain by the Prince of Asturias Foundation to individuals, entities or organizations from around the world who make notable achievements in the sciences, humanities, and public affairs....
- (1985) Recipient of the Wolf Prize in Sculpture
- (1983) Elected an honorary academician by the Royal Academy
External links
- www.eduardo-chillida.com: Museum Chillida-Leku (Hernani, Spain)
- Eduardo Chillida at arteseleccion.com
- Galerie Lelong, Paris