EDUARDO CHILLIDA

Early Years

Eduardo Chillida was born in San Sebastián in 1924. He played in goal for Real Sociedad before a knee injury curtailed his football career, so in 1943 he went to the University of Madrid to study architecture. However, in 1947 he quit the architecture degree and started drawing for the Fine Arts Circle in Madrid and attending José Martínez Repullés’ sculpture workshop, making his first pieces in clay. In 1948 he moved to Paris and started making sculptures from plaster. In 1949, his sculpture Forma was selected for the Salon de Mai. He married Pilar Belzunce in 1950 and they moved back to the Basque Country in 1951, the year he also made his first artwork in iron.

Eduardo Chillida: Artworks

Chillida’s early iron sculptures were made from materials he found at scrapyards and using rural tools such as axes and pitchforks. By 1959, having had works exhibited at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York City and documenta in Kassel, he began printing etchings.

Light plays a huge role in Chillida’s work. In 1963 he toured Greece with his wife, the French gallerist and philanthropist Jacques Dupin and his wife and the French art dealer and critic Louis Clayeux. Chillida became fascinated by the light—a contrast to the light in the Basque region—and this inspired him to explore the concepts of light and lightness, as well as working in alabaster. A notable examples is Lo Profundo es el Aire (How Profound is the Air) (1996), which diffuses light by allowing it to shine through the sculpture in “windows”.

• Chillida started the steel Piene del Viento (Comb of the Wind) series in 1952 and eventually made 23 pieces. Perhaps the most well-known is in the sea at La Concha Bay in San Sebastián, a piece Chillida gifted to the city in 1977. In a 1997 interview, he said: “The sea has been my master and I have learned much from it. When I was young... I watched the waves and thought, ‘Where do they come from?’”
• Between 1954 and 1966, Chillida made Anvil of Dreams, a series of small sculptures exploring the idea of making work in a forge. Blocks of wood become “anvils” while steel forms are “hammers”.

Eduardo Chillida: Select Awards

• International Grand Prize for Sculpture, Venice Biennale (1958)
• Carnegie Prize for Sculpture (with Willem de Kooning), United States of America (1964)
• Wellington Sculpture Prize, Spain (1970)
• Europe Prize in Fine Arts (1983)
• Praemium Imperiale, Japan (1991)
• Lifetime Achievement Award, International Sculpture Centre, United States of America (1998)
• Medal of the Arts, Musée des Arts et des Traditions Populaires, France (2002)
• Medal of the Order of Constitutional Merit, Spain (2004)

Eduardo Chillida: Select Public Commissions

• Alrededor del vacío V (Around the Void V), World Bank, Washington DC (1969)
• Lugar de encuentros IV (Meeting Place IV), Bilbao (1973)
• Estela a Rodríguez Sahagún (Stele to Rodríguez Sahagún), Madrid, 1993
• Buscando la luz II (Searching for Light II), Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (1997)
• Buscando la luz IV (Searching for Light IV), Quatar University (2001)

Eduardo Chillida: Select Exhibitions

Select Solo Exhibitions

• Eduardo Chillida. Chillida in Menorca, Hauser & Wirth, Menorca (2024)
• Memory, Mind, Matter. The Sculpture of Eduardo Chillida, The Meadows Museum, Dallas (2018) (and touring)
• Eduardo Chillida. From Iron to Light, Ordovas, London (2013)
• Chillida. Reflexión—Materia, Centro Fundación Unicaja de Cádiz (2009) (and touring)
• Chillida, Museum of Contemporary Art, Monterrey (2002) (and touring)
• Chillida 1948–1998, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (1998)
• Eduardo Chillida, Fundacío Joan Miró, Barcelona (1986)
• Eduardo Chillida, Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York City (1980) (and touring)
• Eduardo Chillida, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC (1979)
• Eduardo Chillida, Galerie Buchholz, Munich (1973)
• Eduardo Chillida, Galerie Maeght, Paris (1968)

Select Group Exhibitions

• Chillida-Ortega Muñoz, Bilbao Fine Arts Museum (2024)
• Sections / Intersections. 25 Years of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Collection (2022)
• Summer Show, Royal Society of Sculptors, London (2018)
• Osas Plus in the Vasarely Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest (2012)
• Arte español, Galerie Rieder, Munich (2006)
• The Object of Art, Museum of Contemporary Spanish Art, Palma de Mallorca (1998)
• 44th Venice Biennale (1990)
• 43rd Venice Biennale (1988)
• documenta 6, Kassel (1977)
• Dix Ans d’Art Vivant, Maeght Foundation, Saint-Paul-de-Vence (1967)

Further Reading

• Official website Biography at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York City
• Obituary in The New York Times

Eduardo Chillida FAQs

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