Eduardo Chillida
Prints Available from Grafos Verlag
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'Boundaries are actually the main factor
in space, just as the present, another boundary, is the main factor in
time.' These are the words of Eduardo Chillida, a sculptor and at the
same time, a great master of graphic space.
A central motif which has preoccupied this artist since the 50's is the hand as a phenomenon of spatial examination. Chillida soon gave up figurative sculpture, but he retained the hand studies. No other artist has explored this motif so intensely. For him, the hand was a replacement for the entire nude. The opening and closing of the palm, the image of the hand becomes a formal cosmos, the position of the fingers an inspiration for sculptures, terracottas and works on paper. It is quite fortunate to be able to offer this single print by one of the most outstanding masters of 20th century art. 'The hand as the richest articulation of space', Eduardo Chillida had once noted. Hollow spaces appear in their interior. Grafos offers Chillida's etching, 'The Hand' (1975), the key motif to an entire creative process. This sensitive etching invariably calls attention to the artist's top-quality graphic oeuvre. Pencil, chalk, charcoal and black tusche, as well as black felt-tip marker are media he has used since the 50's. From the fine line to the thick one, there is only a small step. His works attain the characteristics of calligraphy. The color is black. There are hand studies from 1972, pen-and-ink drawings in brown ink, in which the thumb touches the ring finger as in this etching. The stroke is also seeking, feeling about, directed by a lucid mind. Chillida has dedicated numerous drawing series to the
hand motif, followed by graphic series, such as the seven etchings (1986-96,
CR 86003-86009 Martin Van der Koelen) or 'La mémoire et la main'
(1986), etchings to poetry by Edmond Jabès (Daniel Lelong Editeur).
This visionary is directed by a strong gift for observation. With intuitive
caution, Chillida feels his way forward into the material and the spiritual
form. He returns to his basic forms in his iron and terracotta plastics. |
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'Woodcut' (1975) embodies Chillida's free and consistent rings. Digging furrows, matter penetrates into space. Chillida had once referred to it as 'the mystery of inner space' as well as 'hidden spaces'. Fullness and void remain interchangeable, however. One example of this is Chillida's woodcut series to Martin Heidegger's 'Kunst und Raum' (Art and Space, St. Gallen, Erker Presse, 1969), a project of collaboration between the artist and the philosopher in which the existential pictorial components also find their place in philosophy. Thus Heidegger writes: 'Void is probably linked precisely with the special character of a place, and therefore is not a lack but an intrinsic part of it.' There are block-like flat pieces in his 'papier découpés' (paper cut-outs) as well. Black and white areas standing across from each other or gripping one another, intertwining like hands. The intertwining of coast and sea. Chillida works cyclically. For him this is the most
obvious way to reflect subtle changes and shifts. 'A single wave is
nothing', wrote Chillida, 'it does not interest me. But after this wave
comes another, and then yet another.' For Chillida, it is the interval,
the void 'from which the vibration of form sets out and goes beyond
its boundaries'. Chillida has often put his thoughts into writing. Through
his very nature, he thinks poetically. Drawing the poetry of form, he
sees form and sculpture as the poetry of architecture. Sculpture and
music have the same resounding and ever self-renewing space. 'Sound
volume equal to void', he had called it. |
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