Austria Also Celebrates The Centenary of Chillida

It will be one hundred years since the birth of Eduardo Chillida, and the Eduardo Chillida – Pilar Belzunce Foundation, the Ministry of Culture and the Basque Government are working on the implementation of a program that, in addition to exhibitions, It will bring us activities linked to music, education and thought and whose purpose is to bring the figure of the sculptor closer to a large audience, of different origins and generations.

Just a few weeks ago, at the end of March, Chillida Leku, coming from a Museum of Fine Arts in Bilbao undergoing expansion works, installed his monumental suspended piece Meeting Place IV, conceived, as the whole of the series to which it belongs, to be shown in public places; and a few days before, the fourth and last volume of the author’s catalog raisonne was presented, corresponding to the period 1991-2002 and published in Spanish, Basque and English by Sucesión Eduardo Chillida, Editorial Nerea and Kutxa Fundazioa.

In this work, each piece is accompanied by detailed information on its dating, materials, owners, exhibitions and bibliography, and is completed with one or more photographic reproductions. In total, the four volumes of the catalog have 2,000 pages that examine 1,400 sculptures.

But, strictly speaking, the first proposal of this centenary will be “Gravitation”, an exhibition that, from April 29, can be visited at the Austrian center Kunsthalle Krems and that will be the first monographic dedicated to the artist in that country.

It will consist of eighty works and will allow us to analyze the fundamental elements of the investigations of the San Sebastián: the relationships between mass and space, between full and empty or between light and darkness, opposing concepts and some ethereal ones that he translated into essential forms. and with solid materials.

The exhibition will remember its almost fifty projects in public spaces, the steel sculptures, sometimes weighing several tons, that we can see in public squares, landscapes and parks, and will have documentation that will bring us closer to them, such as sketches, models and photographic documentation of works such as the Peine del Viento .

Also with graphic production, an interesting counterpart to his sculptures: we will be able to contemplate line drawings, collages, relief engravings or hanging works on paper, the gravitationsthat he carried out since the mid-eighties, in the form of collages but without using glue: he superimposed several papers (some previously treated with ink, or cut out) that he sewed at one end with a thread or string, so that they were suspended or “ gravitating” in space.

In Krems, reference will also be made to a certain sports aspect, not too widespread, of his production: goalkeeper for the Royal Society in the 1930s and 1940s, before suffering a leg injury and deciding to study Architecture and Fine Arts, Chillida dedicated several drawings to the Soccer World Cup that took place in our country in 1982.

The main lenders of the pieces of “Gravitation” will be the family and the legacy of the artist and the Chillida Leku Museum; They have also supported the Hauser & Wirth project and other Spanish museums and collections.

In the coming months, the San Telmo Museum and the Tabakalera de San Sebastián, Artium Museoa (Vitoria), the Fundación Telefónica or the aforementioned Hauser & Wirth gallery, and the filmmaker Arantxa Aguirre, of whom we We have spoken as a result of his documentary Zurbarán y sus doce hijos , he will elaborate another on the history of Chillida Leku,.

Likewise, a web page for the artist has recently been set up, independent of the portal of his Museum, where we can review his career and his work based on a kind of photobiography and a rich database.

Chillida’s centenary wants to be, as his children have stated, universal as was the work of the author of Elogio del horizonte , and hence this first European celebration exhibition: My father always said that he was like a tree with roots in the ground and open arms to the world .