Eduardo Chillida carpet – 412

Eduardo Chillida carpet – 412

Period: 2002 – Spain
Dimensions: cm. 260 x 280
Signed Chillida – numbered 5/10

SKU: 412 Categories: ,

Description

Eduardo Chillida carpet
(San Sebastián, January 10, 1924 – San Sebastián, August 19, 2002)

“Untitled”
Period: 2002 – Spain
Dimensions: cm. 260 x 280
Signed Chillida – numbered 5/10

Eduardo Chillida was born into a family with deep roots in the Basque Country. Although a military man by profession, his father, Pedro Chillida, had a strong penchant for drawing and painting.
Eduardo enrolled at the Academy in 1939, where he met Ignacio Malaxecheverria, the only person he ever recognised as a true mentor. He also played goalkeeper for Real Sociedad de Fútbol, until a knee injury forced him to give up the sport and start enjoying long walks in the mountains instead.
In 1943, he started studying architecture, while his brother, Gonzalo Chillida, threw himself into painting, but in 1947 Eduardo left university and took up sculpture, before moving to Paris.
According to various critics, including Cosme de Barañano, it was in Paris that Chillida’s work really began to take shape. Here he made his first plaster sculptures, drawing inspiration from the works of ancient Greek sculpture on display in the Louvre. In 1950, he married Pilar Belzunce in San Sebastián, and they moved to Paris together, where, that same year, he made his debut in the art world with an exhibition entitled “Les Mains Eblouis”.
This was the period in which he began his friendship with the painter Pablo Palazuelo, and his rivalry with the sculptor Jorge Oteiza. Both Chillida and Oteiza’s art was linked with the constructivist tradition, although each focused on slightly different themes, as the art and architecture critic Juan Daniel Fullaondo explained in various books and articles. Oteiza, however, never stopped accusing Eduardo Chillida of plagiarism, and even published a book called “Libro de los Plagios” (Book of Plagiarism) in 1991, showing photographs of works by Chillida alongside other similar but earlier works by Oteiza.
In 1951, the first of his eight children was born, and the family soon decided to go back to San Sebastián permanently. This was when Chillida produced Ilarik, his first sculpture made of iron, a material he would continue to use for the rest of his life.
In 1962, alongside other leading international sculptors of the age, he took part in an exhibition called “Sculture nella città”, organised by Giovanni Carandente as part of the 5th “Festival dei Due Mondi” in the Italian city of Spoleto. Here he presented two iron sculptures from 1956: Oyarak and Beguirari.
Eduardo Chillida defined himself as “a loner, a loner with Pili”. To enable Chillida to devote himself entirely to art, his wife Pilar took care of all the other aspects of their family’s life. From the age of 15, she was his rock. As well as inheriting his taste for art, his wife and children also took part in ambitious projects such as the Chillida Leku Museum and the Mount Tindaya cave.
His work as an interior designer is one of the lesser known aspects of Eduardo Chillida’s career. The work he did on his family home in Mount Igueldo gave rise to an atmosphere defined by neutral colours, simple furniture inspired by Basque folk tradition, and the direct use of most of the building’s construction features for aesthetic purposes.
Towards the end of his life, Chillida founded the Chillida Leku Museum, in the year 2000, in the grounds of Zabalaga farm (in the municipality of Hernani, near San Sebastián), the site of a historic horse stud farm. The farmhouse is a beautiful 16th-century building, in the typical Basque style, which Chillida restored with the same approach he applied to sculpture. Zabalaga is surrounded by a large garden which now houses what is probably the largest collection of the artist’s works. Here, people can view the majority of Chillida’s works, outdoors, in a truly magical atmosphere. The inauguration of the Chillida Leku Museum was attended by the sculptor himself, who was already suffering from illness, and by King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofía of Spain, José María Aznar, Spain’s Prime Minister at the time, and the then German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder.
Eduardo Chillida died on 19 August 2002 at his home in Mount Igueldo, San Sebastián.

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