Eduardo Chillida

EDUARDO CHILLIDA JUANTEGUI (San Sebastian, 1924 - 2002).
Untitled.
Lithograph, copy V467/1000.
Signed in plate and justified by hand.
Measurements: 45 x 32 cm.

Chillida begins his formation in the School of Architecture of the University of Madrid, but he abandons his studies to dedicate himself to soccer, as goalkeeper of the Real Sociedad. As a result of an injury, he was forced to abandon the sport, and it was then that his artistic vocation awakened. He 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. With the idea that art should be accessible to all, throughout his life he made numerous public works, as well as sculptures for museums around the world. His works dialogue with the environment, so that many are already considered emblematic places for citizens, as is the case with the "Peine del viento" in San Sebastian and the "Puerta de la Libertad" in Barcelona. 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 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 received the Grand Cross for Humanitarian Merit from 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.