21 Mar 2018

Memory, Mind, Matter: The Sculpture of Eduardo Chillida

Meadows Museum, Southern Methodist University

Reviewed by Tim McClure

The work of Eduardo Chillida is not widely known in the United States outside of the museums, where it has been quietly but energetically collected since the 1950s. But Chillida is perhaps the best known twentieth-century Spanish sculptor in Europe. The materials in his sculpture and drawings - iron, stone, alabaster, ceramic, and paper - convey a sense of rootedness to the earth, specifically to Chillida's native Basque region of Spain.

Imagery in his work, even in the smaller pieces, is monumental, and it stops just short of explicit meaning. In Mural G-334 (1999), massive, industrial-looking shapes seemingly burned into refractory concrete tiles suggest an ancient wall upon which falls a looming shadow of something primal and inevitable. A recurrent theme is a sense of vastness into which one loses one's sense of self.

The exhibition catalogue, illustrated with fine photographs of the art, is exceptional as an introduction to Chillida's artistic intentions.