1924-2002 Spain

“Building is creating in space, this is what sculpture is about”

Eduardo Chillida is a Spanish artist known for his large scale sculptures and the way those relate to the space surrounding them.

He started studying architecture but he quit to become an artist. In five decades he became a recognized figure at an international level in the postwar abstract movement with peers such as Picasso which he collaborated with, Dali and many other Spanish artists which also had international projection.

His knowledge on the matter of architecture is shown in the attention he pays to materials and both the space layout of all of his pieces and the location he carefully chooses to place them in to. His abstract and understanding of air as a geometrical form creates forms that shrink or increase within his sculptures and leave abstract outside forms that surprise for both the geometrical and organic at once.

Chillida chose very pure materials that showed his research around concept and metaphysical matters and appear rough and naked in his sculptures. For his first sculptures he used chalk as he was working on smaller pieces but soon he became more interested in the metamorphosis of space and the abstract definition of volume through shape and he started enlarging his sculptures and placing them into public spaces which resulted in him using materials such as rusted iron, steal and wood which also represented the roughness of the environment, industry, architecture and agriculture of the Bask region in which he grew up in.