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Lot Essay
The poetic and often metaphysical titles that Chillida gave his sculptural pieces (Yunque de Sueños translates as 'Anvil of Dreams') closely reflects the aesthetic aims the artist had for his work and the deep sense of almost mystical or transcendent beauty that they evoke. All of Chillida's work, but especially those he made in metal are an invocation of what he described as 'the limit.' For Chillida this was a point or place beyond dimensions where, like the language of the sea crashing against the rocky San Sebastian coastline or the meeting point of sea and sky on the horizon, elemental opposites meet and define themselves with timeless clarity. It is the point where solid 'embraces' void and where space (which Chillida once described as a very quick material, 'so quick that you can't see it') is given form, definition and even meaning by the much heavier and slower materials such as wrought iron permeating and articulating it.
Standing proudly atop a venerable wooden column, delicate folds of metal seek to define the mystical sense of space that the artist cherished so much. Yet in Yunque de Sueños XIV the roughly hewn pleats are not restrictive, they do not seek to capture the space and restrict its interaction with the physical world. Indeed Chillida deliberately leaves openings within his composition to allow the free interaction between the void and even introduces several arm-like appendages which appear to reach out and encourage a communication between the sculpture and the environment it inhabits.
Chillida's concept of space and of the void - that infinite expanse often invoked by the reaching, grasping or enclosing forms of his sculpture - is one that has its roots in the artist's initial training as an architect. For Chillida, space is not only a 'very quick' material and as such intimately connected, as Einstein has shown, with time, it is also, as a material, integrally related to form. In the same way that a simple material form in iron can grow and develop in such a way as to define itself by the way that it interacts with and articulates the space around it, space too, articulates and is defined by the form of the heavier and slower materials/forms it encounters. It is this symbiotic meeting place of apparent opposites that is made most clear through the art of sculpture and what is meant by Chillida when he refers to 'the limit.'
Rooted in reality and in the elemental nature of his materials it is probably for this reason there is always a pervasive sense of the organic running through Chillida's work even when the forms he has adopted are at their most geometric or abstract. This is particularly true of his iron sculptures which never fail to invoke a sense of the primal nature and ancient mystery of the smithy's art. Yunque de Sueños XIV with its simple and compressed construction of form branching out into space in a seemingly natural development or progression of rectangular form is a powerful example of this common tendency in Chillida's work.
Chillida once described his work as being like the fruit of a tree rooted in the Basque soil of his homeland and this natural analogy is typical of his work. "Form," he said, "springs spontaneously from the needs of the space that builds its dwelling like an animal in its shell. Just like this animal, I am also an architect of the void" (E. Chillida quoted in Chillida 1948-1998, exh. cat., Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid 1998, p. 62). Reaching out, permutating and searching in almost every conceivable direction, the iron forms of the sculpture seem to develop and unfold in the same way that a plant reaches out to explore its natural environment. This sense of organic growth is heightened by the three branch-like iron bars seemingly sprouting through the heart of the work and reaching out into space. Seeming to be constantly moving, caught in a state of perpetually development as if attempting to trap space at the same time as it is entrapped by it, Yunque de Sueños XIV is one of the most animated and graceful in Chillida's entire oeuvre.
Standing proudly atop a venerable wooden column, delicate folds of metal seek to define the mystical sense of space that the artist cherished so much. Yet in Yunque de Sueños XIV the roughly hewn pleats are not restrictive, they do not seek to capture the space and restrict its interaction with the physical world. Indeed Chillida deliberately leaves openings within his composition to allow the free interaction between the void and even introduces several arm-like appendages which appear to reach out and encourage a communication between the sculpture and the environment it inhabits.
Chillida's concept of space and of the void - that infinite expanse often invoked by the reaching, grasping or enclosing forms of his sculpture - is one that has its roots in the artist's initial training as an architect. For Chillida, space is not only a 'very quick' material and as such intimately connected, as Einstein has shown, with time, it is also, as a material, integrally related to form. In the same way that a simple material form in iron can grow and develop in such a way as to define itself by the way that it interacts with and articulates the space around it, space too, articulates and is defined by the form of the heavier and slower materials/forms it encounters. It is this symbiotic meeting place of apparent opposites that is made most clear through the art of sculpture and what is meant by Chillida when he refers to 'the limit.'
Rooted in reality and in the elemental nature of his materials it is probably for this reason there is always a pervasive sense of the organic running through Chillida's work even when the forms he has adopted are at their most geometric or abstract. This is particularly true of his iron sculptures which never fail to invoke a sense of the primal nature and ancient mystery of the smithy's art. Yunque de Sueños XIV with its simple and compressed construction of form branching out into space in a seemingly natural development or progression of rectangular form is a powerful example of this common tendency in Chillida's work.
Chillida once described his work as being like the fruit of a tree rooted in the Basque soil of his homeland and this natural analogy is typical of his work. "Form," he said, "springs spontaneously from the needs of the space that builds its dwelling like an animal in its shell. Just like this animal, I am also an architect of the void" (E. Chillida quoted in Chillida 1948-1998, exh. cat., Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid 1998, p. 62). Reaching out, permutating and searching in almost every conceivable direction, the iron forms of the sculpture seem to develop and unfold in the same way that a plant reaches out to explore its natural environment. This sense of organic growth is heightened by the three branch-like iron bars seemingly sprouting through the heart of the work and reaching out into space. Seeming to be constantly moving, caught in a state of perpetually development as if attempting to trap space at the same time as it is entrapped by it, Yunque de Sueños XIV is one of the most animated and graceful in Chillida's entire oeuvre.