Rhythm-Time-Silence

In New York, eight monumental sculptures by Eduardo Chillida cover all the themes of the great Spanish master and presents works in his favourite materials such as steel, granite and alabaster.

Like something out of a nineteenth century novel, the cargo departed from Bilbao and stopped off at the Netherlands before embarking on a long voyage that lasted over a month, up against all the unpredictability of the ocean, its waves and its currents.

You couldn’t send the eight monumental sculptures by Eduardo Chillida by air, almost fifty tonnes of marble and steel that the Ordovas gallery in London decided to take to New York. A slow-moving enterprise that is a far cry from the accelerated pace that the world of contemporary art has accustomed us with its incessant round of fairs and biennials.

From the Chillida-Leku foundation in Spain, set in a green landscape and immersed in contemplative silence, the works have now arrived at Madison Avenue in the beating heart of the Big Apple, in a space carefully chosen by gallerist Pilar Ordovas who spent more than a year searching for it. One might say it is a place almost designed around the work of Chillida: a pop-up gallery of 930 square metres flooded with light from huge windows, that will be home to this precious selection for more than two months. The collection covers all the major themes of the great Spanish master and presents works in several of his favourite materials such as steel, granite and alabaster.

The sculptor has not been seen in the US for twenty-six years, the last retrospective was at the Guggenheim in 1980. “This is exactly why – explains the young dealer Ordovas, previously an expert at Christies and director of the Gagosian gallery in London – it was important to take him back to America, to offer an opportunity for new generations of curators and collectors to experience first-hand the work of this important Basque artist”.

Born in 1924, Chillida studied architecture before dedicating himself to drawing and sculpture. His relationship with his homeland, with the light of the Atlantic and with nature, form the central focus of the work. After spending some time in Paris he in fact returned to live in his native San Sebastian where in 1977 he created one of his most significant works, Piene del Vento. An enormous sculpture, made up of rudimentary steel combs anchored to the rocks of the cliffside and exposed to all weathers in a poetic attempt to comb the wind. With his work, Chillida places man before the immensity of nature, its immeasurable strength, and it is precisely this majesty, this scale that makes us feel that we are all equal: before the sky, the sea and the wind there are no differences.

“Chillida – explains Ordovas – was a great political activist in a period in which it was difficult and problematic to be in Spain, he was a defender of civil rights, tolerance between people and freedom, all values that are reflected and embodied in his work.”

He made mainly site-specific works for public commissions. His approach to art was completely free, he didn't accept compromises or diktats and personally managed all the production phases of his work, presenting it to the client only when finished and remaining the owner right up to the end. “His consistency has always deeply fascinated me, he never bends or accommodates any wish. The story of the sculpture Arco de la libertad, one of the most important in the exhibition describes this integrity well. The work was commissioned to be placed in a square in Paris but when it was almost finished it was decided to move it to another site where it would achieve greater visibility. Chillida was against it: changing the space around the piece meant changing the piece itself so he never consigned the sculpture and decided to keep it in his own private collection. He was totally disinterested in any of the dynamics of commercialisation, for this reason he produced one-off pieces, there are no editions or copies of Chillida”.

In producing monumental works, one of the most significant characteristics is the ability to work with the materials, to use them to achieve extreme and unexpected results. He worked with steel and iron with superlative technique reconnecting to the ancient tradition Basque of forging metals; his land was in fact famous in Roman times for its iron mines and for the expertise of its blacksmiths. The gigantic pieces he makes from Corten steel end up seeming light, he gives them movement, harmony, lyricism, despite it being an extremely heavy material and one of the most difficult to bend. So then Consejo al espacio VIII becomes a forest of trees or a castle depending on the individual perception of the observer and Elogio del vacío VI liberates itself from space like a raised fist, inside of which some of the braces and strips that go to make it up are empty, transforming it into a hand that tries to grip the surrounding space, to grasp the void.

“It is neither abstract nor figurative, his totally individual style draws inspiration from music, poetry, from the circle of extraordinary artists he was connected to like Miró, Calder and Kandinskij”.

The works in alabaster and granite then opened another chapter in the work of this artist-thinker who already in 1958 had received the grand prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale and who took part twice in Documenta. Through stone sculpture Chillida takes his exploration right inside the work, within the actual material. The work contains a substance not visible from the outside, it becomes a labyrinth divided into different areas and corridors, like a room seen from the perspective of an open door. This thinking has given rise to works such as Lo profundo es el aire XVIII where the air is light and at the same time deep, it is essence. Chillida works to create a universe inside the stone. All the works in this series, in both alabaster and granite, make reference to verses by the Spanish poet Jorge Guillén and serve for the most part as a preparation for the colossal project at Tindaya that the sculptor wanted to build at Fuerteventura, one of the Canary Islands. Tindaya became the macroscopic vision of the studies inside material. In fact Chillida planned a work in the mountain, he wanted to excavate right inside it to create a monument to tolerance. Finding oneself inside the earth, in contact with one’s guts, the spectator would be physically surrounded by nature and once again its majesty and power would make him feel small and on a par with other human beings.

At the time, the project was opposed by an extreme fringe of ecologists and sociologists and Chillida, who died in 2002, never managed to realise it. “It was approved just recently – recounts Ordovas – but it would take years to raise the funding to build it”. All the works shown in the gallery are the property of the Chillida family and come from his foundation, let’s hope then that this exhibition and its proceeds can contribute to financing the reinstatement of a visionary and free project in support of a message that today more than ever, the entire world needs to keep alive.

until 7 January 2016
Chillida. Rhythm-Time-Silence
Ordovas
488 Madison Avenue, New York

Rhythm-Time-Silence

In New York, eight monumental sculptures by Eduardo Chillida cover all the themes of the great Spanish master and presents works in his favourite materials such as steel, granite and alabaster.

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