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Lot Essay
This work is registered in the archives of the Museo Chillida-Leku under no. 1958003.
Executed in 1958, Yunque de sueños III (Anvil of Dreams III) is an exquisite small-scale monument by Eduardo Chillida. A lyrical homage to the physical act of creating sculpture, Yunque de Sueños III takes its poetic title from the artist's notion of forging a new art of the sublime on a metaphorical anvil, through the hammering, firing, shaping and stretching of metal in its most organic, molten state into a visual expression of the artist's philosophy. The Yunque de Sueños sculptures articulate the essence of Chillida's aesthetic aims, mixing what Carola Geidion-Welcker once described as 'precise craftwork...free imagination, 'iron' discipline and winged fantas.' (C. Giedion-Welcker, quoted in Eduardo Chillida: Praise of Iron, exh. cat., IVAM, Valencia, 2002, p. 203). Cast in bronze after an iron proof, Yunque de sueños III is one of five unique bronze sculptures closely related to the early series of iron sculptures completed between 1954 and 1966, including Yunque de sueños XIII (Anvil of Dreams XIII) which now forms part of the collection of the Reina Sofía.
Created in praise of his materials, Yunque de sueños III celebrates the art of the blacksmith. Cast in bronze, the lustrous, brunet bronze wing-like form of the sculpture seems softened by the natural tactility of the wooden base. Perched atop a stoic wooden plinth, the Yunque de sueños series represents the first instance in which Chillida in his practice. Chillida's intuitive handling of the roughhewn, wooden base from which the metal form extends, represents an important turning point in the trajectory of Chillida's ouevre, which would later go on incorporate wood as a medium unto its own.
As the title suggests, Yunque de Sueños exist both in the real world of material reality and in a metaphysical dream world, based upon both philosophical ideals and artistic imagination. Poet Octavio Paz saw the way that the opposites play off each other as one of the fundamental aspects of Chillida's work. Speaking of this series, Paz declared: 'the title of this series obeys the same poetic logic as do the earlier works: the anvil and the dream are only another, more energetic formulation of the duality governing Peine del viento or Rumor de limites. The transportation also affects the relationship between the two terms of the metaphor: the anvil acquires the property of the dream, and, like the comb and limits, denies itself, is transformed into its opposite, and so becomes again empty space.' (O. Paz, quoted in 'Chillida: From iron to light', Chillida, exh. cat., Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute of Art, Pittsburgh, 1979 - 1980, p.15).
The delicate folds of metal create a playful dance with the negative space surrounding it. The solid bronze in Yunque de sueños III serves as much as a celebration of its own materiality as it is an acknowledgement of the fabric of space around it. The metal both penetrates and is penetrated by the mysterious, intangible space surrounding it. 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.' A sense of this Einsteinian-inspired notion of space as both a material and temporal dimension provides the key to an understanding of all Chillida's work. This metaphysical dimension is the central tenant to Chillida's early sculptural practice, and Yunque de sueños III remains an exquisite example which embraces and celebrates the void of space as both a material and a spiritual entity.
Executed in 1958, Yunque de sueños III (Anvil of Dreams III) is an exquisite small-scale monument by Eduardo Chillida. A lyrical homage to the physical act of creating sculpture, Yunque de Sueños III takes its poetic title from the artist's notion of forging a new art of the sublime on a metaphorical anvil, through the hammering, firing, shaping and stretching of metal in its most organic, molten state into a visual expression of the artist's philosophy. The Yunque de Sueños sculptures articulate the essence of Chillida's aesthetic aims, mixing what Carola Geidion-Welcker once described as 'precise craftwork...free imagination, 'iron' discipline and winged fantas.' (C. Giedion-Welcker, quoted in Eduardo Chillida: Praise of Iron, exh. cat., IVAM, Valencia, 2002, p. 203). Cast in bronze after an iron proof, Yunque de sueños III is one of five unique bronze sculptures closely related to the early series of iron sculptures completed between 1954 and 1966, including Yunque de sueños XIII (Anvil of Dreams XIII) which now forms part of the collection of the Reina Sofía.
Created in praise of his materials, Yunque de sueños III celebrates the art of the blacksmith. Cast in bronze, the lustrous, brunet bronze wing-like form of the sculpture seems softened by the natural tactility of the wooden base. Perched atop a stoic wooden plinth, the Yunque de sueños series represents the first instance in which Chillida in his practice. Chillida's intuitive handling of the roughhewn, wooden base from which the metal form extends, represents an important turning point in the trajectory of Chillida's ouevre, which would later go on incorporate wood as a medium unto its own.
As the title suggests, Yunque de Sueños exist both in the real world of material reality and in a metaphysical dream world, based upon both philosophical ideals and artistic imagination. Poet Octavio Paz saw the way that the opposites play off each other as one of the fundamental aspects of Chillida's work. Speaking of this series, Paz declared: 'the title of this series obeys the same poetic logic as do the earlier works: the anvil and the dream are only another, more energetic formulation of the duality governing Peine del viento or Rumor de limites. The transportation also affects the relationship between the two terms of the metaphor: the anvil acquires the property of the dream, and, like the comb and limits, denies itself, is transformed into its opposite, and so becomes again empty space.' (O. Paz, quoted in 'Chillida: From iron to light', Chillida, exh. cat., Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute of Art, Pittsburgh, 1979 - 1980, p.15).
The delicate folds of metal create a playful dance with the negative space surrounding it. The solid bronze in Yunque de sueños III serves as much as a celebration of its own materiality as it is an acknowledgement of the fabric of space around it. The metal both penetrates and is penetrated by the mysterious, intangible space surrounding it. 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.' A sense of this Einsteinian-inspired notion of space as both a material and temporal dimension provides the key to an understanding of all Chillida's work. This metaphysical dimension is the central tenant to Chillida's early sculptural practice, and Yunque de sueños III remains an exquisite example which embraces and celebrates the void of space as both a material and a spiritual entity.