Eduardo Chillida

Eduardo Chillida (1924-2002) is among the sculptors who have contributed most decisively to the vocabulary of abstract sculpture, and to its material innovations, in twentieth-century European art-although he himself envisaged abstraction as simply a truer "realism," as an undistorted account of material properties. Along with clay, stone and concrete, Chillida particularly favored wrought iron, using it to achieve robust sensations of both mass and movement, at once affirming solidity and defying gravity. Chillida's writings, published here for the first time, take the reader into the sculptor's independent-minded musings on the nature of sculpture. These philosophical and theoretical reflections, and the practical and interpretive notes he made on his work, make for a basic manual on sculpture, a uniquely articulate meditation on forms and a clue into the energies at play in his work.

Writings

The 3 volume set maps how Chillida's use of materials and technique varies, chronicling the artist's sculpting career started with iron and steel, then timber, marble, alabaster, concrete, and terracotta between 1950's and 1970's. The name Chillida is generally connected with heavy, massive monumental sculptures but these books reveal he produced some very different work. Each graphic work is catalogued with title, date, number produced, production method, size, and type of paper.

Eduardo Chillida - Praise of Iron

Giovanni Carandente

The sculptural work of Chillida (San Sebastian, 1924-2002) is non-figurative and characterised, in the artist's own words, by the dialogue between masses and voids of often monumental proportions, elements that he endows with conceptual unity thanks to his mastery of the laws of movement and balance. In this book Carandente, far from restricting himself to commenting on the most visible aspects of the artist's career, analyses the conceptual and technical dimensions of his activity, both the individual task of searching and perfecting and the socio-cultural context that acts as a framework to the Basque sculptor's output. Chillida is undoubtedly one of the most outstanding figures in the sculpture of the second half of the 20th century. 782 illustrations

Open-air Sculptures

Compañía Telefónica Nacional de España

Antoni Tàpies

Chillida y Tàpies en la colección de Telefónica

Ch & T

The writings of Eduardo Chillida (1924-2002), the entirety of which are collected in this volume, represent a revealing series of reflections on art and culture by the deeply influential Spanish sculptor, originally intended either for his private use or as public lectures. Edited in collaboration with Chillida's family, the texts include tributes to such figures as Bach, Joan Miró, Gabriel Aresti, Pío Baroja, Joan Brossa, María Zambrano and Mark Rothko, alongside discussions of the most difficult artistic questions that Chillida faced throughout his career, covered here in his acceptance speech for his induction to the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. Also discussed are metaphysical themes of perception, knowledge and religion, all of which informed his sculpture's approach to materiality as a kind of "realism," and made his body of work one of the most significant in abstract sculpture.

Eduardo Chillida

Books

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