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拍品专文
Included in the artist’s important solo exhibition at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin in 1991, Estela IV (Stele IV) (1973) is an eloquent and intimate example of Eduardo Chillida’s abstract sculptural practice. It is part of a loose and significant series of works produced over the course of his career that take inspiration from Basque stelae: traditional stone-carved and disk-shaped funerary sculptures. A rectangular steel prism stands upright on its square face. Pinched like clay just above its middle, it hinges at an angle and becomes a fulcrum from which the sculpture’s architecture extends in perfect balance. Thin sheets of steel curl into cylinders. They wrap around pockets of air as though alive and prehensile, and reflect Chillida’s desire to articulate absence as well as mass: to be, in his own words, ‘an architect of the void’ (E. Chillida quoted in Chillida 1948-1998, exh. cat. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid 2000, p. 62).
For Chillida, sculpture was defined just as much by an object’s material presence as it was by the open space surrounding it: the hollows, internal enclosures, supple bends and concave surfaces. Born in San Sebastián in 1924, he initially studied architecture at the University of Madrid before devoting himself to sculpture. He moved to Paris in 1948 where, inspired by the ancient Greek statues he encountered on regular visits to the Louvre, he produced his first figurative plaster sculptures. It was when he returned to his native Basque Country in 1951 that Chillida discovered iron ore and steel alloy, and developed the abstract geometric style that would come to define his oeuvre. Ilarik (1951) was his very first iron piece and, incidentally, the first work to explore Basque funerary stelae. ‘I used the word for “funerary stone” because I wanted to communicate with our funerary stelae’, Chillida said of the work in a 1975 interview. ‘I realised that as Basque visual artists we had an important root there. That was the first non-figurative sculpture I made’ (E. Chillida quoted in I. Chillida and A. Cobo (eds.), Eduardo Chillida. Catálogo Razonado de Escultura I, Donostia 2019, p. 49).
The traditional stelae that decorate Chillida’s northern Spanish homeland date from pre-Christian times to the late-nineteenth century. He was fascinated by their relationships to place, burial, culture, and community. Reprising this rich Basque symbol, Chillida’s own stele sculptures often featured important and personal dedications to writers, poets, painters, philosophers, politicians and even close friends. Of the many tributes Chillida paid through his art in his lifetime, it is ‘the stele sculptures [that] stand out’ (I. Chillida and A. Cobo (eds.), ibid., p. 314). Other famous examples include Stele for Millares (1972)—dedicated to Canary Islands painter Manolo Millares—held in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation collection. In Estela IV, Chillida’s rich cultural roots find new, intricate expression.
For Chillida, sculpture was defined just as much by an object’s material presence as it was by the open space surrounding it: the hollows, internal enclosures, supple bends and concave surfaces. Born in San Sebastián in 1924, he initially studied architecture at the University of Madrid before devoting himself to sculpture. He moved to Paris in 1948 where, inspired by the ancient Greek statues he encountered on regular visits to the Louvre, he produced his first figurative plaster sculptures. It was when he returned to his native Basque Country in 1951 that Chillida discovered iron ore and steel alloy, and developed the abstract geometric style that would come to define his oeuvre. Ilarik (1951) was his very first iron piece and, incidentally, the first work to explore Basque funerary stelae. ‘I used the word for “funerary stone” because I wanted to communicate with our funerary stelae’, Chillida said of the work in a 1975 interview. ‘I realised that as Basque visual artists we had an important root there. That was the first non-figurative sculpture I made’ (E. Chillida quoted in I. Chillida and A. Cobo (eds.), Eduardo Chillida. Catálogo Razonado de Escultura I, Donostia 2019, p. 49).
The traditional stelae that decorate Chillida’s northern Spanish homeland date from pre-Christian times to the late-nineteenth century. He was fascinated by their relationships to place, burial, culture, and community. Reprising this rich Basque symbol, Chillida’s own stele sculptures often featured important and personal dedications to writers, poets, painters, philosophers, politicians and even close friends. Of the many tributes Chillida paid through his art in his lifetime, it is ‘the stele sculptures [that] stand out’ (I. Chillida and A. Cobo (eds.), ibid., p. 314). Other famous examples include Stele for Millares (1972)—dedicated to Canary Islands painter Manolo Millares—held in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation collection. In Estela IV, Chillida’s rich cultural roots find new, intricate expression.