Background

Eduardo Chillida was born on January 10, 1924, in San Sebastián, Spain. He was a son of Pedro Chillida, a major, and Carmen Juantegui, a soprano.

Education

Eduardo Chillida was raised in a Catholic family in San Sebastián where he attended primary and secondary schools. He played as a goalkeeper in the local football team, Real Sociedad.

In 1943, the family relocated to Madrid. Eduardo entered the architecture department of the University of Madrid. He dropped the university out four years later without receiving a diploma in favor of drawing and sculpture.

To pursue his studies in art, Chillida soon moved to Paris. While in the capital of France, he explored the works of the Ancient Greek sculptors at the Louvre Museum, as well as the art of other famous artists of the time like Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brancusi, and José González.

Career

The start of Eduardo Chillida’s career can be counted from the end of the 1940s which he spent in Paris, France. The first sculptures made of plaster and terracotta in the studio he established in the city were primarily torsos and busts. By 1951, Chillida came back to Spain where he settled down with his wife in Hernani which remained his home till the end of his life.

Upon returning to his home country, the sculptor turned his attention to forged iron. After receiving several lessons from a local blacksmith, Chillida set up a forge in his studio. The new material allowed Eduardo to change the concept of his sculptures which became more abstract since then. He began to operate with empty space, the vacuum, scale, and matter, the elements that became a core part of his subsequent works, including his first sculpture from iron, ‘Ilarik’.

From 1954 to 1956, Chillida worked on the series ‘Anvil of Dreams’ where he used wood as a base. He also experimented with steel and alabaster throughout the decade. The debut solo exhibition of Chillida as a sculptor was held in 1954 at the Clan Gallery in Madrid. It was followed by more than one hundred personal exhibitions and group shows internationally, in the United Kingdom, United States, Italy, France, Germany, and Japan. In 1958, the sculptor represented Spain at the Venice Biennale returning there two more times during the course of his career.

It was also the period when Eduardo Chillida produced the first site-specific sculptures and works for various public places, like four doors for the basilica of Arantzazu or a monument of stone installed in one of the parks in San Sebastián to commemorate Sir Alexander Fleming. His works were installed near the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, the ThyssenKrupp building in Düsseldorf, in a courtyard at the World Bank offices in Washington, D. C., and elsewhere in the world onwards.

At the beginning of the 1980s, Chillida and his wife purchased a farmhouse with a land parcel near Hernani, in the San Sebastián region. The following decade, an open-air museum Chillida Leku featuring many of the sculptor’s works was established there.

In addition to a great number of sculptural compositions that received international recognition, Eduardo Chillida tried his hand in etching, lithographs and woodcuts during the course of his career as well. The illustrations for Jorge Guillen's ‘Mas Alla’ were among such projects.

The first retrospective of Chillida’s artworks was organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in 1966. Since then, the sculptor had retrospectives in such well-known art venues as the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, Palacio de Miramar in San Sebastián, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid.

Achievements

• 

  Eduardo Chillida is considered one of the most distinguished Spanish sculptors of the Basque origin who made an invaluable contribution to the culture of the 20th century.
  
  The excellent command of matter and form won the audience at the exhibitions Chillida had all around the globe. The sculptor frequently represented Spain at the important international art events. So, he participated in the Documenta exhibition in Kassel and in the Venice Biennale three times.
  
  The geography of Chillida’s public works is as impressive as the geography of his shows. The rocks at La Concha Bay, the Cantabrian Sea in Sebastián are decorated by a collaborative project ‘Haizeen orrazia’ (The Comb of the Wind he worked on with an architect Luis Peña Ganchegui. His major sculptural compositions can be seen in Barcelona, Berlin, Paris, and Dallas. There are Chillida’s sculptures outside Beverly Hills City Hall, in the city of Frankfurt, Münster, and elsewhere around the world.
  
  The works by Eduardo Chillida are acquired by such well-known art spaces as the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Tate Britain in London; the Kunsthalle Basel in Switzerland, and the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin.
  
  Chillida was a recipient of such awards as the Carnegie International Prize, the Andrew Mellon Prize, the Praemium Imperiale, the Princess of Asturias Awards, and the Wolf Prize.
  
  Eduardo Chillida’s sculpture ‘Buscando La Luz IV’ (Looking for the Light IV) was purchased at Christie's in London for $6,310,434 in 2013.

Works

More photos

• drawing

  • Collage

• painting

  • Gravitacion

  • Sakon

  • Chicago

  • Esku (Hand)

  • Aromas VI

• sculpture

  • Homenaje a A. Fleming

  • Arbre

  • Peine del Viento

  • Gudari

  • Elogi a l'Aigua

  • Gurutz

  • Monumento a la Tolerancia

  • La sirena varada (Lugar de encuentros)

  • Peine del Viento

  • Berlin

  • Monumento

  • Gure aitaren etxea

  • Buscando la luz

  • De Musica IV

  • Toleranz durch Dialog

  • Elogio al Horizonte

  • Begirari

  • Lurra G-254

  • Advice to Space V (Consejo al espacio V)

Views

Eduardo Chillida took inspiration for some of his sculptures from his Basque roots. So, he used the Basque language Euskera to entitle many of his sculptures.

Quotations: "My whole Work is a journey of discovery in Space. Space is the liveliest of all, the one that surrounds us. ...I do not believe so much in experience. I think it is conservative. I believe in perception, which is something else. It is riskier and more progressive. There is something that still wants to progress and grow. Also, this is what I think makes you perceive, and perceiving directly acts upon the present, but with one foot firmly planted in the future. Experience, on the other hand, does the contrary: you are in the present, but with one foot in the past. In other words, I prefer the position of perception. All of my work is the progeny of the question. I am a specialist in asking questions, some without answers."

"The sculptures are very large and my work is a rebellion against gravity. A dialectic exists between the empty and full space."

Membership

Eduardo Chillida was named an Honorary Academician of the Royal Academy in 1983. He also was a member of the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste (Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts).

• Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste , Germany

• Royal Academy , United Kingdom

  1983

Personality

Physical Characteristics: Eduardo Chillida seriously injured his knee while playing for Real Sociedad football team in his youth.

At the end of his life, Chillida suffered from Alzheimer's disease.

Interests

• notion of the space, materiality

Connections

Eduardo Chillida married Pilar Belzunce in 1950. The family produced eight children named Luis, Ignacio, Eduardo, Guillaume, Pedro, Susana, Maria, and Carmen.

Father:

Pedro Chillida

Mother:

Carmen Juantegui

Wife:

Pilar Belzunce

Eduardo Chillida with his wife Pilar.

Son:

Luis Chillida

Son:

Ignacio Chillida

Son:

Eduardo Chillida

Son:

Gillaume Chillida

Son:

Pedro Chillida

Daughter:

Susana Chillida

Daughter:

Maria Chillida

Daughter:

Carmen Chillida

Acquaintance:

Martin Heidegger

colleague:

Luis Peña Ganchegui

References

• Chillida A book by Peter Selz.
  1986
• Eduardo Chillida: Sculpture and Works on Paper A book by William Packer.
  1992
• Eduardo Chillida: Open-Air Sculptures The study analyzes not only the artistic, stylistic and environmental aspects of Chillida's work but also its ethical components.
  2003
• Eduardo Chillida: Architect of the Void Taking in around 130 works, the catalog honors all of Chillida’s diverse oeuvre and accompanies the most comprehensive exhibition of his work in Germany.
  2019