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Lot Essay
'Buscando La Luz is a meeting place between art and nature, between inner and outer, between sculpture and man'
(K. de Barañano, quoted in Homage to Chillida, exh. cat., Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Bilbao, 2006, p. 88).
'Sculpture is a function of space. I don't mean the space outside the form, which surrounds the volume and in which the form lives, but the space generated by the form, which lives within it and which is more effective the more unnoticeably it acts. You could compare it to the breath that swells and contracts forms, that opens up their space - inaccessible to and hidden from the outside world - to view. I do not see it as something abstract, but as a reality as solid as the volume that envelops it'
(E. Chillida, quoted in I. Busch (ed.), 'Eduardo Chillida, Architect of the Void: On the Synthesis of Architecture and Sculpture', Chillida 1948-1998, exh. cat., Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 1998, p. 66).
'Buscando La Luz I and IV are perfect pieces; just as good popular architecture is the daughter of the landscape on which it is set or established; it is sober by necessity and functional without knowing it'
(K. de Barañano, quoted in Homage to Chillida, exh. cat., Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Bilbao, 2006, p. 88).
One of Eduardo Chillida's grandest and most ambitious works, Buscando La Luz IV (Searching for the Light IV), 2001, is a spectacular monolith, standing as a philosophical and conceptual counter-point to the artist's seminal El Peine del Viento (Wind Comb). Towering 8 metres above the landscape, the totemic column extends into the sky, gracefully widening at its apex as if raised in exaltation to the sun. Just as El Peine del Viento, anchored to the rocks and surrounded by the sea, is a tribute to the wind and the water of the artist's beloved San Sebastián, Buscando La Luz IV is an homage to light and to the earth. Buscando La Luz welcomes light into the heart of sculpture, a concept which became the central focus of the artist's final works. Rendered out of corten steel, the rich ferrous patina recalls the serenity and warmth of the sun-scorched Basque earth. Described by curator Kosme de Barañano as a 'perfect' work, Buscando La Luz IV is a unique form from the artist's last large-scale sculpture series completed only a year before the artist's death, and marks the culmination of his pioneering investigations into scale and the architecture of space. The pure and unembellished materiality of Buscando La Luz IV embodies the artist's philosophical exploration of form; built as much from rich ferrous metal as it is sculpted by the light that penetrates the location in which it has been placed. Before its installation at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in 2006, Chillida's Buscando La Luz IV was on long-term display at The Yorkshire Sculpture Park from 2002 - 2004. One of only three unique iterations of the series, a smaller scale tripartite version was commissioned to mark the inauguration of the third Pinakothek museum in Munich in 2002, placed in the plaza that links the Alte and Neue Pinakothek with the Pinakothek der Moderne. Another iteration resides at the Museo Chillida-Leku, formerly the Chillida family farmhouse in San Sebastián.
Informed by Chillida's stelae, Buscando La Luz IV stands proudly vertical, piercing the infinite emptiness surrounding it. What first appears as a perfectly symmetrical, linear frame later reveals subtly curved wrought metal, the sensuous curves and strong verticality of Buscando La Luz IV channeling from its hilt to its base, uniting earth and sky. The subtle variations in the walls transform static metal slabs into undulating waves, the vertical rhythm highlights the melodic interaction between material and light. The soft ripple of its walls imbues impossible lightness into the metal tower, as if billowing in a gentle breeze. The sharp edges carving out the light, delineating and generating space as the very conditions for Chillida's sculpture. Symbolic of the meeting place between light, material and void. The focal point becomes the apex of the column where the sculptor has articulated a dwelling-like internal space whose dark interior is interpenetrated by the light and space of the exterior world. His aim, as the title of this series of works suggests, was to infuse the profound depths of this dense mass of solid material with the airy lightness of space. 'Space?' Chillida once observed, 'Sculpture is a function of space. I don't mean the space outside the form, which surrounds the volume and in which the form lives, but the space generated by the form, which lives within it and which is more effective the more unnoticeably it acts. You could compare it to the breath that swells and contracts forms, that opens up their space - inaccessible to and hidden from the outside world - to view. I do not see it as something abstract, but as a reality as solid as the volume that envelops it' (E. Chillida, quoted in I. Busch (ed.), 'Eduardo Chillida, Architect of the Void: On the Synthesis of Architecture and Sculpture', Chillida 1948-1998, exh. cat., Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 1998, p. 66).
HOMAGE TO THE BASQUE LAND
Having entered into a dialogue with the sea in his celebrated El Peine del Viento, in Buscando La Luz IV Chillida begins to contemplate the sky and seeks to frame it using his sculptural practice. The metal appears carved by the light that penetrates the location in which it has been placed. As Bernini's colonnade encircles St Paul's Square in the Vatican City, in Buscando La Luz IV Chillida frames the sky with sculpture, carving out the sky with its folds of metal. Approaching the work from a distance, the viewer's perception of space is challenged, the work transforming in its landscape.
Towering above the landscape, the totemic pillar allows it huge scope to dovetail with the surrounding space. Funneling light through its broad opening, the tower-like sculpture becomes the intersection of the elemental opposites of pure light and iron alloy. There is universality to Chillida's monumental sculpture which reflects his desire to create a democratic art that is accessible to the public. The sculpture's interaction with space will all be different depending on the exterior environment, but the constant play of shadows as the sun travels across the sculpture maintains a harmonious relationship with the space around it.
Engaging with space in this way, the contrast between the solidity and monumentality of the sculpture and the empty air around it is accentuated. Richly coloured, the burnt umber surface of Buscando La Luz IV evokes the rustic landscape and rich soil of the artist's beloved Basque region. Inspired by the traditional blacksmith workshops, Chillida's skillful manipulation of the material recalls the metalworking tradition of his native San Sebastián. This nostalgic relationship with the earth represents a significant connection between the artist's country, his materials, and his sculptural practice. As Pierre Volboudt suggested 'the tortured [metal] becomes an adversary; the flame leaves it at its mercy. Measuring the strength of the former, forseeing and following every reaction of the latter, spying on its changing colour, selecting the precise point of attack, figuring out the violence of the blow that is to be struck, above all eliminating chance, seizing the moment when the material which has been delivered up to the ordeal by fire gives in, takes on new life and lives out the ephemeral cycle of its total metamorphosis' (P. Volboudt, quoted in exh. cat., Eduardo Chillida, Paris, 1967, p. 179).
SEARCHING FOR LIGHT
Light was a deep source of inspiration for the artist and was one of his most frequently honoured concepts. As the title suggests, Buscando La Luz IV drives upwards seeking light, its crown unfurling like a budding flower. Making use of the formal qualities of its architecture, Buscando La Luz IV participates in a lyrical interplay with the light and space of its surroundings, engaging in a complex relationship in which the sculpture appears crafted as much from the metal as the pure light at its core. The stark materiality of the richly textured iron alloy contrasts the open core of the sculpture occupying the void that Chillida regards as one of the most important elements in his art. By exposing the interior of the free standing column, Chillida allows a continuous flow of light into the core of the robust corten steel. Swelling with light, Buscando La Luz IV appears to exist not only in the steel from which it was crafted, but also the negative space which is its counterpoint. As Barañano has observed, 'For Chillida, light is a phenomenon that impregnates space in so far as it manifests it and allows space to express itself' (K. de Barañano, quoted in Homage to Chillida, exh. cat., Guggenheim, Bilbao, 2006, p. 88).
ARCHITECT OF THE VOID
The void at the sculpture's centre is the counter point to the dense materiality of the steel. Chillida saw this as a contrast not of form or density, but instead of speed: 'The relationship between space and material - both things that are absolutely necessary to do with the sculptor - are absolutely different in stone, clay and iron. These are slow materials and space is a quick material, very quick, so quick in fact that we have the impression that there is nothing there' (E. Chillida, quoted in Chillida, RM Arts and ETB Euskal Telebista, film produced for Basque Television, 1985). In this way, Chillida's choice to incorporate corten steel highlights both the tactile patina of the raw material but also highlighting the spatial void filled within and around its walls. 'Buscando La Luz conveys Chillida's key intention, of rendering the void perceptible and tangible, in a dialogue with the viewer that is almost nonchalant in its naturalness' (C. Schulz-Hoffmann, 'Chillida's Sculpture in the Public Domain', in Eduardo Chillida: Buscando La Luz, exh. cat., Pinakothek-Fumont, Munich, 2002, p. 20).
For Chillida, the polarity of light and darkness, like that of material and void, were all ultimately indivisible from one another. It was in highlighting the harmonious convergence of materials of different speeds that formed the heart of all of Chillida's work, the materials meeting at the juncture in time which the artist defined as 'the limit'. 'The limit' for Chillida is a horizon point where solid 'embraces' void and where space is given form, definition and even meaning by the much heavier and slower materials such as wrought metal permeating and articulating it. 'The limit' Chillida said, 'is the real protagonist of space just as the present is the protagonist of time. The past and the future are contemporary because they are contemporary in the present. The communication of both is in the present. In the same way, the present is a limit between the past and the future, but there is no dimension to the present but nevertheless, everything happens in the present. It is a limit like the limit in space between space and the form around it. Everything in space happens at this limit, and there is no dimension either to the limit in space.
The limit is the protagonist of space' (E. Chillida, quoted in Chillida, RM Arts and ETB Euskal Telebista, film produced for Basque Television, 1985). Buscando La Luz IV, operates as this symbiosis between positive and negative space, the void and form. Originally placed at the entrance to the Ensanche of the city, Buscando La Luz IV is also a self-referential homage to the artist's own love of architecture. Since the late 1960s Chillida had paid homage to architecture, having abandoned the vocation as a young man in favour of art; and in 1989, Chillida's own contribution to that discipline was recognised when he was awarded an honorary degree by the High Council of Architects' Associations of Spain. Commissioned by Japanese architect Arata Isozaki to accompany his glass and brick Atea towers designed in Bilbao, the asymmetric aesthetic of the tower compels the viewer to reflect upon the imperfection of nature. Indeed, the ever-changing quality of the natural light produces series of undulating shadows across its surface, creating a uniquely sculptural object dependent on its surrounding. Just as the Japanese artistic tradition of wabi-sabi invites mediation on the acceptance of transience and imperfection of all objects in life (hence the phonological and etymological connection with the Japanese word sabi, to rust), here the reductive grandeur of Buscando La Luz IV is testimony to artistic precision and the cultural resonance of Chillida's monumental output.
(K. de Barañano, quoted in Homage to Chillida, exh. cat., Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Bilbao, 2006, p. 88).
'Sculpture is a function of space. I don't mean the space outside the form, which surrounds the volume and in which the form lives, but the space generated by the form, which lives within it and which is more effective the more unnoticeably it acts. You could compare it to the breath that swells and contracts forms, that opens up their space - inaccessible to and hidden from the outside world - to view. I do not see it as something abstract, but as a reality as solid as the volume that envelops it'
(E. Chillida, quoted in I. Busch (ed.), 'Eduardo Chillida, Architect of the Void: On the Synthesis of Architecture and Sculpture', Chillida 1948-1998, exh. cat., Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 1998, p. 66).
'Buscando La Luz I and IV are perfect pieces; just as good popular architecture is the daughter of the landscape on which it is set or established; it is sober by necessity and functional without knowing it'
(K. de Barañano, quoted in Homage to Chillida, exh. cat., Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Bilbao, 2006, p. 88).
One of Eduardo Chillida's grandest and most ambitious works, Buscando La Luz IV (Searching for the Light IV), 2001, is a spectacular monolith, standing as a philosophical and conceptual counter-point to the artist's seminal El Peine del Viento (Wind Comb). Towering 8 metres above the landscape, the totemic column extends into the sky, gracefully widening at its apex as if raised in exaltation to the sun. Just as El Peine del Viento, anchored to the rocks and surrounded by the sea, is a tribute to the wind and the water of the artist's beloved San Sebastián, Buscando La Luz IV is an homage to light and to the earth. Buscando La Luz welcomes light into the heart of sculpture, a concept which became the central focus of the artist's final works. Rendered out of corten steel, the rich ferrous patina recalls the serenity and warmth of the sun-scorched Basque earth. Described by curator Kosme de Barañano as a 'perfect' work, Buscando La Luz IV is a unique form from the artist's last large-scale sculpture series completed only a year before the artist's death, and marks the culmination of his pioneering investigations into scale and the architecture of space. The pure and unembellished materiality of Buscando La Luz IV embodies the artist's philosophical exploration of form; built as much from rich ferrous metal as it is sculpted by the light that penetrates the location in which it has been placed. Before its installation at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in 2006, Chillida's Buscando La Luz IV was on long-term display at The Yorkshire Sculpture Park from 2002 - 2004. One of only three unique iterations of the series, a smaller scale tripartite version was commissioned to mark the inauguration of the third Pinakothek museum in Munich in 2002, placed in the plaza that links the Alte and Neue Pinakothek with the Pinakothek der Moderne. Another iteration resides at the Museo Chillida-Leku, formerly the Chillida family farmhouse in San Sebastián.
Informed by Chillida's stelae, Buscando La Luz IV stands proudly vertical, piercing the infinite emptiness surrounding it. What first appears as a perfectly symmetrical, linear frame later reveals subtly curved wrought metal, the sensuous curves and strong verticality of Buscando La Luz IV channeling from its hilt to its base, uniting earth and sky. The subtle variations in the walls transform static metal slabs into undulating waves, the vertical rhythm highlights the melodic interaction between material and light. The soft ripple of its walls imbues impossible lightness into the metal tower, as if billowing in a gentle breeze. The sharp edges carving out the light, delineating and generating space as the very conditions for Chillida's sculpture. Symbolic of the meeting place between light, material and void. The focal point becomes the apex of the column where the sculptor has articulated a dwelling-like internal space whose dark interior is interpenetrated by the light and space of the exterior world. His aim, as the title of this series of works suggests, was to infuse the profound depths of this dense mass of solid material with the airy lightness of space. 'Space?' Chillida once observed, 'Sculpture is a function of space. I don't mean the space outside the form, which surrounds the volume and in which the form lives, but the space generated by the form, which lives within it and which is more effective the more unnoticeably it acts. You could compare it to the breath that swells and contracts forms, that opens up their space - inaccessible to and hidden from the outside world - to view. I do not see it as something abstract, but as a reality as solid as the volume that envelops it' (E. Chillida, quoted in I. Busch (ed.), 'Eduardo Chillida, Architect of the Void: On the Synthesis of Architecture and Sculpture', Chillida 1948-1998, exh. cat., Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 1998, p. 66).
HOMAGE TO THE BASQUE LAND
Having entered into a dialogue with the sea in his celebrated El Peine del Viento, in Buscando La Luz IV Chillida begins to contemplate the sky and seeks to frame it using his sculptural practice. The metal appears carved by the light that penetrates the location in which it has been placed. As Bernini's colonnade encircles St Paul's Square in the Vatican City, in Buscando La Luz IV Chillida frames the sky with sculpture, carving out the sky with its folds of metal. Approaching the work from a distance, the viewer's perception of space is challenged, the work transforming in its landscape.
Towering above the landscape, the totemic pillar allows it huge scope to dovetail with the surrounding space. Funneling light through its broad opening, the tower-like sculpture becomes the intersection of the elemental opposites of pure light and iron alloy. There is universality to Chillida's monumental sculpture which reflects his desire to create a democratic art that is accessible to the public. The sculpture's interaction with space will all be different depending on the exterior environment, but the constant play of shadows as the sun travels across the sculpture maintains a harmonious relationship with the space around it.
Engaging with space in this way, the contrast between the solidity and monumentality of the sculpture and the empty air around it is accentuated. Richly coloured, the burnt umber surface of Buscando La Luz IV evokes the rustic landscape and rich soil of the artist's beloved Basque region. Inspired by the traditional blacksmith workshops, Chillida's skillful manipulation of the material recalls the metalworking tradition of his native San Sebastián. This nostalgic relationship with the earth represents a significant connection between the artist's country, his materials, and his sculptural practice. As Pierre Volboudt suggested 'the tortured [metal] becomes an adversary; the flame leaves it at its mercy. Measuring the strength of the former, forseeing and following every reaction of the latter, spying on its changing colour, selecting the precise point of attack, figuring out the violence of the blow that is to be struck, above all eliminating chance, seizing the moment when the material which has been delivered up to the ordeal by fire gives in, takes on new life and lives out the ephemeral cycle of its total metamorphosis' (P. Volboudt, quoted in exh. cat., Eduardo Chillida, Paris, 1967, p. 179).
SEARCHING FOR LIGHT
Light was a deep source of inspiration for the artist and was one of his most frequently honoured concepts. As the title suggests, Buscando La Luz IV drives upwards seeking light, its crown unfurling like a budding flower. Making use of the formal qualities of its architecture, Buscando La Luz IV participates in a lyrical interplay with the light and space of its surroundings, engaging in a complex relationship in which the sculpture appears crafted as much from the metal as the pure light at its core. The stark materiality of the richly textured iron alloy contrasts the open core of the sculpture occupying the void that Chillida regards as one of the most important elements in his art. By exposing the interior of the free standing column, Chillida allows a continuous flow of light into the core of the robust corten steel. Swelling with light, Buscando La Luz IV appears to exist not only in the steel from which it was crafted, but also the negative space which is its counterpoint. As Barañano has observed, 'For Chillida, light is a phenomenon that impregnates space in so far as it manifests it and allows space to express itself' (K. de Barañano, quoted in Homage to Chillida, exh. cat., Guggenheim, Bilbao, 2006, p. 88).
ARCHITECT OF THE VOID
The void at the sculpture's centre is the counter point to the dense materiality of the steel. Chillida saw this as a contrast not of form or density, but instead of speed: 'The relationship between space and material - both things that are absolutely necessary to do with the sculptor - are absolutely different in stone, clay and iron. These are slow materials and space is a quick material, very quick, so quick in fact that we have the impression that there is nothing there' (E. Chillida, quoted in Chillida, RM Arts and ETB Euskal Telebista, film produced for Basque Television, 1985). In this way, Chillida's choice to incorporate corten steel highlights both the tactile patina of the raw material but also highlighting the spatial void filled within and around its walls. 'Buscando La Luz conveys Chillida's key intention, of rendering the void perceptible and tangible, in a dialogue with the viewer that is almost nonchalant in its naturalness' (C. Schulz-Hoffmann, 'Chillida's Sculpture in the Public Domain', in Eduardo Chillida: Buscando La Luz, exh. cat., Pinakothek-Fumont, Munich, 2002, p. 20).
For Chillida, the polarity of light and darkness, like that of material and void, were all ultimately indivisible from one another. It was in highlighting the harmonious convergence of materials of different speeds that formed the heart of all of Chillida's work, the materials meeting at the juncture in time which the artist defined as 'the limit'. 'The limit' for Chillida is a horizon point where solid 'embraces' void and where space is given form, definition and even meaning by the much heavier and slower materials such as wrought metal permeating and articulating it. 'The limit' Chillida said, 'is the real protagonist of space just as the present is the protagonist of time. The past and the future are contemporary because they are contemporary in the present. The communication of both is in the present. In the same way, the present is a limit between the past and the future, but there is no dimension to the present but nevertheless, everything happens in the present. It is a limit like the limit in space between space and the form around it. Everything in space happens at this limit, and there is no dimension either to the limit in space.
The limit is the protagonist of space' (E. Chillida, quoted in Chillida, RM Arts and ETB Euskal Telebista, film produced for Basque Television, 1985). Buscando La Luz IV, operates as this symbiosis between positive and negative space, the void and form. Originally placed at the entrance to the Ensanche of the city, Buscando La Luz IV is also a self-referential homage to the artist's own love of architecture. Since the late 1960s Chillida had paid homage to architecture, having abandoned the vocation as a young man in favour of art; and in 1989, Chillida's own contribution to that discipline was recognised when he was awarded an honorary degree by the High Council of Architects' Associations of Spain. Commissioned by Japanese architect Arata Isozaki to accompany his glass and brick Atea towers designed in Bilbao, the asymmetric aesthetic of the tower compels the viewer to reflect upon the imperfection of nature. Indeed, the ever-changing quality of the natural light produces series of undulating shadows across its surface, creating a uniquely sculptural object dependent on its surrounding. Just as the Japanese artistic tradition of wabi-sabi invites mediation on the acceptance of transience and imperfection of all objects in life (hence the phonological and etymological connection with the Japanese word sabi, to rust), here the reductive grandeur of Buscando La Luz IV is testimony to artistic precision and the cultural resonance of Chillida's monumental output.