Eduardo Chillida

Eduardo Chillida was born on January 10, 1924, in San Sebastián, Spain. After studying architecture from 1943 to 1947 at the University of Madrid, he began to concentrate on drawing and sculpture. In 1950 Chillida lived in Villaines-sous-Bois, France, before moving the following year to Hernani, near San Sebastián, where he formed a friendship with José Cruz Iturbe.Chillida’s first one-man show was held at the Galería Clan in Madrid in 1954. The city of San Sebastián commissioned him to execute a monument to Alexander Fleming in 1955. He won the International Grand Prize for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale in 1958. He was awarded the Kandinsky Prize in 1960. He traveled to Greece in 1963 and the following year he won the Sculpture Prize at the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh. In 1966 Chillida met the Philosopher Martin Heidegger, whose book, Der Kunst und der Raum, he illustrated.Retrospectives of Chillida’s work were held in 1969 at museums in Basel, Zürich and Munich. In 1971 he was a visiting professor at the Carpenter Centre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and later in the year traveled to Barcelona on the occasion of his solo exhibition at the Sala Gaspar. Chillida and de Kooning shared the Andrew W. Mellon Prize, which was accompanied by a major show at the Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, in 1979. He was given a solo exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 1980; participated at the Venice Biennale in 1990 with a solo show in Ca’Pesaro palace, and received the Praemium Imperiale from the Japan Art Association in 1991. The Chillida-Leku Museum in Hernani, Gipuzkoa was opened in 2000. The artist died that same year, on August 19, in his residence on Mount Igueldo (http://www.guggenheim-venice.it/inglese/collections/artisti/chillida_bio.html).

El Peine del Viento, Steel, 1977

Elogio del Horizonte, steel, 19 90

Yorkshire Sculpture Park, steel, 2006