Eduardo Chillida Juantegui

EDUARDO CHILLIDA JUANTEGUI (San Sebastian, 1924 - 2002).
"Homage to Octavio Paz", 1983.
Etching on Rives BFK paper. Copy 16/50.
Slight colorations in the paper, visible in photo, and damages in the frame.
Publisher: Galart Gallery (Geneva).
Signed and justified.
Measurements: 32 x 28,5 cm; 54 x 76 cm (paper); 91 x 115 cm (frame).
With black lines that intertwine and strategic voids, Chillida builds a space of tension and balance that refers to his monumental sculptures, but transferred to the graphic dimension. The work dialogues with the poetry of Octavio Paz through abstraction and visual rhythm, evoking the interconnection between thought and matter. An identical piece is part of the collection of the Durango Museum, where it is kept under inventory number 89, which shows the importance of this series within Chillida's graphic production and its presence in institutional collections.
Chillida 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. 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. Throughout his life, Chillida received numerous prizes and awards, including the Carnegie Prize, the Rembrandt Prize, the Wolf Foundation of the Arts and the Prince of Asturias Prize for the Arts. He was also an academician of San Fernando, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Honorary of the Royal Academy of Arts of London and 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.