Reference Book #01 _ Chillida & Smithson

reference book #01 eduardo chillida alison and peter smithson paulo fernandez

EDUARDO CHILLIDA JUANTEGUI Eduardo Chillida Juantegui, or Eduardo Txillida Juantegi in Basque, (10 January 1924 – 19 August 2002) was a Spanish Basque sculptor notable for his monumental abstract works.

Chillida’s earliest sculptures concentrated on the human form (mostly torsos and busts); his later works tended to be more massive and more abstract, and included many monumental public works. Chillida himself tended to reject the label of “abstract”, preferring instead to call himself a “realist sculptor”.

Upon returning to the Basque Country in 1951, Chillida soon abandoned the plaster he used in his Paris works – a medium suited to his study of archaic figurative works in the Louvre. Living near Hernani, he began to work in forged iron with the help of the local blacksmith, and soon set up a forge in his studio.

From 1954 until 1966, Chillida worked on a series entitled Anvil of Dreams, in which he used wood for the first time as a base from which the metal forms rise up in explosive rhythmic curves. He began to make sculpture in alabaster 1965.

Rather than turn over a maquette of a sculpture to fabricators, as many modern artists do, Chillida worked closely with the men in the foundry. He then usually added an alloy that caused the metal to take on a brilliant rust color as it oxidizes.

At their best his works, although massive and monumental, suggest movement and tension. Chillida also conceived a distinguished oeuvre of etchings, lithographs and woodcuts since 1959, including illustrations for Jorge Guillen’s Mas Alla (1973) and various other books.

“My whole Work is a journey of discovery in Space. Space is the liveliest of all, the one that surrounds us. ...I do not believe so much in experience. I think it is conservative. I believe in perception, which is something else.

It is riskier and more progressive. There is something that still wants to progress and grow. Also, this is what I think makes you perceive, and perceiving directly acts upon the present, but with one foot firmly planted in the future.

Experience, on the other hand, does the contrary: you are in the present, but with one foot in the past. In other words, I prefer the position of perception.

All of my work is the progeny of the question. I am a specialist in asking questions, some without answers.�

Eduardo Chillida

ALISON AND PETER SMITHSON English architects Alison Smithson (22 June 1928 – 16 August 1993) and Peter Smithson (18 September 1923 – 3 March 2003) together formed an architectural partnership, and are often associated with the New Brutalism (especially in architectural and urban theory).

Peter was born in Stockton-on-Tees in north-east England, and Alison was born in Sheffield, South Yorkshire. They met while studying architecture at Durham University and married in 1949. Together, they joined the architecture department of the London County Council before establishing their own partnership in 1950.

They first came to prominence with Hunstanton School which used some of the language of high modernist Ludwig Mies van der Rohe but in a stripped back way, with rough finishes and deliberate lack of refinement. They are arguably among the leaders of the British school of New Brutalism. They were associated with Team X and its 1953 revolt against old Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) philosophies of high modernism.

Among their early contributions were streets in the sky in which traffic and pedestrian circulation were rigorously separated, a theme popular in the 1960s.

They were members of the Independent Group participating in the 1953 Parallel of Life and Art exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and This Is Tomorrow in 1956. Throughout their career they published their work energetically, including their several unbuilt schemes, giving them a profile, at least among other architects, out of proportion to their relatively modest output.

His teaching activity included the participation for many years at the ILAUD workshops together with fellow architect Giancarlo De Carlo.

BAS Spring 2015