Eduardo Chillida

EDUARDO CHILLIDA JUANTEGUI (San Sebastian, 1924 - 2002).
"Oin-Hatz I", 1973.
Woodcut, copy 52/75.
Signed and justified in pencil.
Measurements: 5,7 x 13,5 cm.(footprint); 26 x 31 cm.(paper); 42 x 49 cm. (frame).

As Octavio Paz wrote about this great artist of international fame: "His is a world prior to history and fables, although it is the source of stories and legends always in conflict with itself and its protagonist are not heroes or ideas but forces and elements. A world that reveals itself in contradictory pairs; iron and wind, paper and steel, light and granite, line and mass, the full and the empty. Immersed in this changing reality in which so many dualities and oppositions confront each other, the artist's eye and hand seek a moment of equilibrium. Form is equilibrium, convergence of forces and antagonistic impulses. A pact or war; before our gaze emerges a form suspended in a magnetic space, between gravitation and levitation".
Chillida began his training at the School of Architecture of the University of Madrid, but abandoned his studies to devote himself to soccer, as goalkeeper for Real Sociedad. As a result of an injury he was forced to abandon the sport, and it was then that his artistic vocation awakened. He began drawing at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, and little by little his interest in sculpture grew. It was during his years in Paris when he made his first plaster sculptures, impressed by the archaic Greek sculpture in the Louvre. In the French capital he held his first sculpture exhibition in 1950. It was at this time when he began his rivalry with the sculptor Jorge Oteiza, who accused him of plagiarizing his works. Both with a work linked to the constructivist tradition, however they dealt with different themes. In 1951 he returned definitively to San Sebastian, and made his first work in iron, the material with which he would work for the rest of his life. With the idea that art should be accessible to all, he created numerous public works throughout his life, as well as sculptures for museums around the world. His works dialogue with the environment, so that many are already considered emblematic places for citizens, as is the case with the "Peine del viento" in San Sebastian and the "Puerta de la Libertad" in Barcelona. Throughout his life, Chillida received numerous prizes and awards, including the Carnegie Prize (1965), the Rembrandt Prize (1975), the Wolf Foundation of the Arts (1984/85) and the Prince of Asturias Prize for the Arts (1987). He was also a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, a member of the Imperial Order of Japan, and was awarded the Grand Cross for Humanitarian Merit by the Institution of the same name in Barcelona. In addition to his Chillida-Leku Museum in Hernani, he is represented in museums and collections around the world, such as the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the MOMA in New York, the Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Tate Gallery in London and the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin.