This is an important year as far as cultural events are concerned, because only in January there are two of great importance: the 150th anniversary of the birth of the architect Antonio Palacios and the 100th anniversary of the birth of the person who concerns us in this article: the artist Eduardo Chillida.
Although some of the most outstanding works of the self-styled “architect of emptiness” are located in his native Donostia, honoring his own quote –“I am like a tree, with roots in a country and branches open to the world“-, there are numerous cities around the globe where works signed by him can be found.
This is the case of cities such as Grenoble (France), Lund (Sweden), Helsinki (Finland) or Dallas (USA), to mention just a few. And among them is also Madrid, where he came to study drawing in 1947 at the Círculo de Bellas Artes -this being, as life would have it, a building designed precisely by Antonio Palacios-.
Chillida’s works in the streets of Madrid
Public works
- Meeting Location II (1971)
- Meeting Place III (better known as La Sirena Varada) (1972)
- Estela to Rodríguez Sahagún (1993)
Public works in institutions
- VI Meeting Location (1974). Juan March Foundation.
- Rumor of Limits VII (1968). Banco Santander Foundation.
The germ of El Peine del Viento XV, at the Reina Sofía
On the other hand, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía also houses some pieces by Chillida. Two works can be seen right now:
- Table of Omar Khayyam II. In the hall of the Nouvel building.
- Toki Egin (Homage to San Juan de la Cruz). In the garden of the Sabatini building.
In addition, the museum has had on display until very recently El Peine del Viento I on the 4th floor of the Sabatini building. However, “for exhibition reasons, the hall is not open now,” the Reina Sofia explained to Madrid Secreto: until June these rooms will host a major exhibition dedicated to Tápies.
This work, as the accompanying number indicates, is the germ that would give rise to the very famous work that defies the force of the sea on the cliffs of Mount Igeldo: El Peine del Viento XV.
This series has a total of 23 sculptures with which he explores, in the words of Carmen Fernández Aparicio one of its essential concepts, that of limit: space is defined by the various interwoven planes that limit that which, before the presence of the sculpture, was an ungraspable void.
The artist himself referred to it in the following terms:“the limit is the true protagonist of space; as the present, another limit, is the true protagonist of time“.