The art world celebrates the centenary since the birth of the Basque artist, who dedicated his entire life to art, creating around 1,400 works on paper, iron and concrete. In his hometown, San Sebastian, different activities were done to celebrate this event, including a concert performed by the Basque symphony orchestra with music by the artist’s favourite musician, Sebastian Bach and the free opening of the Chillida Leku in Hernani, Gipuzkoa. The events were inaugurated by his family and closest friends on the beach of La Concha, where one of his most emblematic works, El peine del viento (Comb of the Wind), is located. A family event that later moved to the Victoria Eugenia theater, to officially inaugurate the program dedicated to the artist, with a show full of art, music and dance. The different activities and exhibitions will take place throughout 2024 in cities such as San Diego in the United States, Santiago de Chile, Künzelsau and San Sebastian.

The art world celebrates the centenary of the Basque artist, who dedicated his entire life to art, creating around 1,400 works on paper, iron and concrete

The Basque artist, who would have celebrated a hundred years of thought and art, was mainly known for his large gravity-defying works that play with space and create places in the void that the viewer must complete through his interaction with the work. Those who have been able to contemplate his works, and immerse themselves through his gaze, have been able to experienced the reflection on the essence of things, on nature and its traces, the material and its weight, or the lightness of what on many occasions we believe to be the heaviest things in the world.

The Basque artist, who would have celebrated a hundred years of thought and art, was mainly known for his large gravity-defying works that play with space and create places in the void that the viewer must complete through his interaction with the work.

As a matter of fact, Chillida himself, referred to man's tireless struggle with gravity, through impossible spaces in his work. Hollows and voids that are sustained by the relationship with the surrounding space, by their own weight, or sometimes even suspended, as in “Lugares de encuentro III”, which is also known as “La sirena varada” or “El elogio al agua”.

Coming back to his best known piece, in “El peine del viento”,  with that subtle and elegant way of looking at nature and space, Chillida uses of iron forms as if they were hands, seemingly capable with this of stroking the wind, and even catching it. Through this the artist makes the invisible, visible, that which can neither be seen nor touched, he ends up leaving a sign in matter.

However, the Basque artist was not only a sculptor, and thanks to his way of seeing and understanding arts, he left us, through his ink engravings, delicate paper treasures, meticulous hand-sewn pearls, which transformed the book into fragile objects, the paper into space and the ink into material.

Despite the controversies and criticisms, the Basque artist was a tireless artist, a hard worker, who left us great works in all the formats that he touched, as well as being a thinking and intellectual artist, from a complicated Spain, but the artist knew how to rise to the challenges of a changing society, leaving us unanswered questions through his works.

But the artist knew how to rise to the challenges of a changing society, leaving us unanswered questions through his works.