Eduardo Chillida

EDUARDO CHILLIDA JUANTEGUI (San Sebastian, 1924 - 2002).
Untitled, ca.1960-70's.
Collage on paper.
Signed in the lower left corner.
Provenance: Aimé Maeght Collection, Paris; Eberhard W. Kornfeld Collection, Bern, on the back with the collector's stamp, Lugt 913b.
Exhibitions: Bern Art Museum, 1989, From Goya to Tinguely, Watercolors and drawings from a private collection [Eberhard W. Kornfeld Collection], cat. no. 238.
Reproduced on page 213 of the catalog.
Very good general state of preservation.
Presents slight yellowish discoloration around the glued paper fragments (collage), which are old traces of glue.
Measurements: 41 x 27 cm; 61 x 47 cm (frame).

This work is an exceptional example of Eduardo Chillida's most intimate and experimental facet. Although he is known worldwide for his monumental sculptures in iron and concrete, his work on paper is fundamental to understand his thought process about space.

It is a collage on paper, a technique Chillida used extensively before developing his famous "Gravitations" (where he eliminated the glue to sew the papers together).

It shows a central horizontal structure that seems to float in the emptiness of the white paper. The brown shapes interlock like blocks of stone or iron beams, recalling the solidity of his public sculptures (such as El Peine del Viento (The Comb of the Wind) or Elogio del Horizonte (In Praise of the Horizon).

As in his sculpture, here the protagonist is both the dark strip and the space surrounding it. The black and brown forms construct a habitable space. Irregular cuts and right angles create a rhythm of "entrances and exits".

Chillida used dense black ink to give visual weight. In this work, the black areas act as deep shadows or "boundaries" of the material. Chillida's use of rag collage is typical of his search for humble and honest materials. He was interested in the rough texture and strength of the material. The edges of the collage are torn by hand. This reveals the fiber of the paper, providing an organic sensibility that softens the geometric rigidity of the composition.

Chillida defined himself as an "architect of the void". In this collage, the paper overlays create a real physical depth (a bas-relief). As a pasted collage, this work is stylistically a direct precursor to his Gravitations of the 1980s. Here the will to create layers and levels is already present, although they are still fixed to the support.

Despite its contained measurements, the work conveys monumentality. The reduced color palette (earth, black, white) reflects the sobriety of the Basque character and the connection with the land and industry that permeates all his work.

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 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.