Martin Chirino

MARTÍN CHIRINO LÓPEZ (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1925-2019).
"El solano", 2007.
Carborundum etching and photogravure on Eskulan paper, copy 41/100.
Signed and justified by hand.
Measurements: 69 x 49 cm.

Approximately since 1959, shortly after his integration in "El Paso", Martin Chirino began to make pieces that elude a space encompassed and gain in dynamism, evoking materialized gestures. In this context we find his first approaches to the theme of the wind, which the sculptor would often address over the next two decades, and which in fact became one of the fundamental themes of his work. Chirino sculpts the wind in a spiral that points to infinity, an element that the artist himself associates with an Atlantic and Mediterranean sign, which emulates the nature of the Canary Islands, his place of origin. Thus, Chirino works the spiral due to its inexhaustible character, stating "You don't know where it begins and where it ends" "A broken spiral in itself is a mystery. It has something of hypothesis and reality. It happens with it as with dreams, that what remains when you wake up is not what you felt, but its rumor".

The sculptor Martín Chirino developed his training at the San Fernando School in Madrid and at the School of Fine Arts in London. After a first sculptural series "Reinas Negras" (Black Queens), and exhibitions such as the group show at the Museo Canario, Chirino settled in Madrid in 1955, accompanied by his friends Manolo Millares, Elvireta Escobio, Manuel Padrono and Alejandro Reino. He also spent a month in London, where he got to know first-hand the Sumerian and Egyptian sculptures in the British Museum. Only one year later, in 1956, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Madrid acquired two of his works. He then held his first solo exhibition at the Ateneo de Madrid, after which he became a member of the recently founded El Paso group. His recognition grew, and only two years later he was given a special room in the Spanish pavilion at the São Paulo Biennial. In 1960 he took part in a group exhibition at the MOMA in New York, where he presented four pieces, one of which already featured the spiral, the most recurrent theme in his work since those years. The gallerist Grace Borgenicht, impressed by these four pieces, made a trip to Madrid to hire Chirino exclusively for the United States, a contract that remained in force until Borgenicht's death in 1994. Since his participation in the MOMA collective, and after the dissolution of El Paso in 1960, Chirino developed his solo career and showed his work all over the world, an abstract production characterized by the lack of narrative elements and by formal and symbolic richness. He is currently represented in museums all over the world, including the Guggenheim in New York, the MACBA in Barcelona, the Juan March Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas, etc.