Martin Chirino

MARTÍN CHIRINO LÓPEZ (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1925).
"The spiral wind of the rose", 2006.
Bronze. Exemplary 12/75.
Signed and dated.
Work reproduced in the catalog raisonné of the artist. p.444.
Measurements: 25 x 60 x 60 cm.
Sculpture of round bulk whose form recalls the abstraction in an organic way. Being a piece that despite the rigidity of the material, it seems ductile. The sculptor has managed to capture the movement through the twisting of the bronze, which forms different waves of volumetric character. However, this spiral that iconographically represents the wind is supported by a base whose volume of straight and rounded lines creates a dialectic play of the forms that make up the sculptural ensemble.
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 moved to 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.