Page 36 - Studio International - June 1965

Chillida Sculptor of Space

by Charles S. Spencer

Since the death of Julio Gonzalez, Eduardo Chillida is dissimilar investigations of Mondrian, Vantongerloo,
the most distinguished living Spanish sculptor (always Moholy-Nagy and others, projected aesthetic and
excluding Picasso). Unlike his two great Catalan pre­ philosophic concepts of special importance to sculpture.
decessors, Chillida is a Basque. born in San Sebastian in If Chillida is one of the inheritors of this new twentieth­
1924. An artist of international reputation and import­ century art. he has brought to it attitudes and traditions
ance. winner of the Carnegie Prize at the 1964 Pitts­ of his own. Not the least is the artisanship of his native
burgh International, his work is virtually unknown to the country, the heavy forged forms and the stylistic
British public, so that his first London exhibition technique of Northern Spain, which can also be found
at the McRoberts and Tunnard Gallery is a major in Gonzalez.
event. It is a matter of some curiosity that although there is
Like such significant contemporaries as Robert one piece of early sculpture in the Museum of Modern
Jacobsen, David Smith, Robert Muller, and our own Art in Madrid, Chillida has only held one major exhibi­
Robert Adams, Chillida is part of a sculptural develop­ tion in Spain. A slow, contemplative artist. who prefers
ment. stemming from Cubism and the Russian to work away from international centres, he produces
Constructivists, which can be claimed as specifically comparatively I ittle sculpture. After studying architecture
of this century and a distinct break with the Hellenistic­ in Madrid from 1943 to 1947, he started working as a
European tradition. sculptor. He lived in Paris from 1948 and 1951, and then
Chillida also inherits what may be a special Spanish settled in the Basque town on Hernani. He had exhibited
quality, since in Picasso and Gonzalez there are both in the Salon de Mai of 1949 and 1950, and in a group
Cubist elements and a concern with defining space. show at the Galerie Maeght. His first one man exhibition
Picasso's 'wire cages· of 1930, drawings in space, were took place at the Galerie Clan, Madrid, in 1954, since
apparently intended as models for monuments large when he has exhibited exclusively at theGalerie Maeght.
enough for human beings to enter. But as early as 1920, He has shown at the Venice Biennale, the Kassel
if not before, Russian artists were making similar Documenta and won a prize at one of the Triennale of
experiments. The chief pioneer Vladimir Tatlin, who Milan. His public commissions include four bronze
made the famous spiral Monument for the Third Inter­ doors for the Cathedral of Aranzazu, and a monument to
national (1919-20). wrote 'It is space that has always Sir Alexander Fleming in his native town of San
1 haunted me, even when my studies of the three Sebastian, where he now lives and works.
The ar11s1 beside one of his dimensions still limited my vision·. Alongside Alexander Confronted by Chillida's sculpture, an immediate
wooden sculptures 1964
Photo: Marianne Adelmann Rodchenko. Gabo, Kandinsky, Pevsner and El Lissitsky, impression is its balanced ·good health'. There is none
he undertook research into basic elements of space and of the angst or Weltschmerz which flavours much
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Iron sculpture 1962 volume in order to discover 'the aesthetic, physical and twentieth-century art. no projection of personal doubt
1.70 cm. functional capacities of these materials'. Thus was or neurosis, no direct emotional or expressionist com­
Kunst museum. Basel
initiated a virtually new language of art. which with the ment on the human situation. In this it is even different
3
Wood sculprwe 1964 dispersal of Russian artists after 1922 and the not from the early Russian constructivists who consciously
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