This piece explores how the sculptor Eduardo Chillida, admired by the poet Gabriel Celaya as “The Engineer of Dreams,” developed a deep bond with concrete and its possibilities.
Chillida left his architecture studies in 1947 to study drawing at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid. A year later he moved to Paris, where his artistic journey began. He created his first iron sculpture, Ilarik, in 1951, and iron would remain a dominant material throughout his career. His inaugural solo show took place in 1956 at the Maeght Gallery, a venue that would become closely tied to his creative identity.
During this milestone exhibition, Gaston Bachelard, a philosopher noted for his work on material imagination, published Le Cosmos de Fer in the Maeght gallery’s Derrière le Miroir. Chillida’s dialogue with depth, intuition, and poetry influenced his understanding of how humans relate to matter beyond the merely physical. Bachelard’s reflections on mass, form, and the imagination offered a framework that Chillida drew on in his own practice.
Chillida consistently pursued the intersection of science and art and valued Bachelard as a guiding voice. In his remarks for the San Academy of Fine Arts, he asked about the fundamental difference between science and art, a question that threaded through his writings. His thoughts on matter, measure, space, gravity, and density repeatedly surfaced, with emphasis on space and time as closely connected partners. He believed that the dialogue between physical law and artistic inquiry could reveal qualitative truths that transcend mere geometry.
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The book The Iron Cosmos recounts Bachelard’s observation that the sculptor speaks through iron about what cannot be said with stone, asserting that iron embodies muscle. Chillida sought to map the muscular regions of sculpture, moving away from chisels and hammers toward the tools of a blacksmith. In time, he discovered a material that united mass with muscle, a synthesis of stone and iron: reinforced concrete.
Chillida created his first reinforced concrete sculpture in 1972, under an overpass on Juan Bravo Street, following a collaboration with civil engineer Jose A. Fernandez Ordóñez. Ordóñez proposed a work for Madrid’s Castellana museum of abstract sculpture, a project developed with his colleague Eusebio Sempere. The collection highlighted pieces donated by artists from across Spain, including Julio González and Alberto Sánchez, and aimed to foster a permanent dialogue between engineering and art. The project sought to bridge the traditional divide between utility and beauty through large-scale reinforced concrete works, among them The Meeting Place in Madrid, Goethe’s House in Frankfurt, Guren Aitaren Etxea in Guernica, and Horizon IV in Gijón.
Meeting Place III represented Chillida’s first encounter with a material outside his prior repertoire, drawing him into the realm of engineering. He explained that his structures always carried a kinship with engineering challenges, balancing steels and their stresses with concretes and their densities, and approaching a physics of their own. The process resembled close collaboration with the built environment, where art and technical know-how meet.
Concrete is an artificial stone formed by mixing cement, aggregate, sand, additives, and water. When combined, these components yield a wide array of concrete types. Reinforced concrete adds steel reinforcement to bear loads across materials, creating robust structures that embody the dialogue between form and function.
Chillida treated concrete as a living material, intending it to age gracefully. He controlled the water–cement ratio, the color and type of aggregates, and sometimes added elements such as iron filings. Fernández Ordóñez remarked that these concretes possessed a density and a presence unlike any previously seen, almost like a living stone shaped by new gravitational rules. The result offered a material breadth with a weight that felt singularly expressive, echoing the sculptor’s interest in density and gravity.
Dialogue with the void asks why a six-ton sculpture like The Meeting Place, perched atop four supports, seems to fly. Chillida spoke of a physical universe with its own laws, where fullness and emptiness converse between matter and void. He recalled seeing a crane lifting a heavy weight and sensing a void above it, while the ground provided support. Concrete, in his view, offered reliable density and strength, enabling bold forms that did not merely float. The Castellana installation emerged from this tension, a massive vertical contest between ascent and descent that embraced the dialogue between gravity and space.
All of Chillida’s reinforced concrete works occupy public spaces. He valued art that belongs to everyone and the potential for sculpture to transform real places. The Horizon IV sculpture on Santa Catalina hill in Gijón stands as a centerpiece of his concrete explorations, an existential encounter with space rather than a mere physical display. The piece is often cited as a culmination of his concrete series, a testament to his belief that great works endure.
Chillida believed the placement of outdoor works mattered deeply, shaping how viewers engage with the surroundings. Collaborations with philosophers and artists reflected his conviction that space, environment, and sculpture should be experienced together. A later reflection linked his ideas with Martin Heidegger, exploring how art concretizes space and creates a dwelling within things. His writings on space and environment frame sculpture as a way to open and stabilize a setting, offering permanence while inviting contemplation.
In Praise of the Horizon highlights the sea as a defining horizon, a border without borders that invites spectators to contemplate distance and connection. San Sebastián’s Wind Comb, a 10-meter high circular sculpture, embodies this architectural approach, opening toward the horizon and inviting viewers to move around the work. For Chillida, the horizon symbolized humanity’s home, a place where exploration and belonging converge.
Chillida’s work invites ongoing inquiry. He read Eugen Herrigel’s The Zen of Archery, a book recommended by a friend, Braque. The ideal strike, he suggested, comes not from force but from clearing desire and focusing effort. In the end, a truly resonant artwork does not reveal every secret; it invites continued reflection and keeps its magic intact. Chillida’s sculptures endure as enduring inquiries into space, matter, and human perception.