Eduardo CHILLIDA (1924–2002) - Lot 15

Eduardo CHILLIDA (1924–2002) Composition, 1966 Ink, signed lower left. 20 x 33 cm Provenance: Private collection, San Sebastián. The work is registered in the archives of the Chillida Foundation under no. CH66DT23. Eduardo Chillida is undoubtedly the most famous artist from the Basque Country. He enjoys international renown. As early as 1966, for the first exhibition of the GAUR Group, his name, like that of Oteiza, served as a true springboard for this avant-garde movement. Widely recognized as a sculptor and for the graphic rendering of his forms, Eduardo CHILLIDA draws from Basque culture a respect for materials—iron, wood, stone, alabaster, or steel—and proposes to shape space with or within them. His legacy in this regard is immense. But this mastery, acquired from the mid-1960s onward, is the result of a process of reflection and development during which he allowed form to be free before taming it. The ink drawing presented here (lot 15) is from 1966, the very year of the GAUR exhibition. It perfectly captures this transition, from a free-flowing ink guided by the hand of the tamer of space and material. Initially an architecture student until 1947, he quickly turned to the fine arts. He began exhibiting in 1950, then again in 1956 at the Galerie Maeght, and in 1954 at the Galerie Denise René. Following his recognition at the 1958 Venice Biennale, the exhibition “Three Spaniards: Picasso, Miró, Chillida” at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston in 1962 illustrates the level of fame Chillida had already attained at the time of the founding of the GAUR Group.