Eduardo Chillida Biography
Eduardo Chillida was born on January 10, 1924 in San Sebastián, Spain.
His works enhance respect for the material, through the creation of sculptural works that address universal themes such as creation and death.
After studying architecture at the University of Madrid, he concentrated on drawing and sculpture. In 1948 he moved to Paris where he became friends with Pablo Palazuelo, with whom he exhibited at the 1949 Salon de Mai.
His first solo exhibition was held at the Galería Clan in Madrid in 1954. The following year the city of San Sebastián commissioned him to create a monument to Alexander Fleming. In 1956 he had the first of many solo exhibitions at the Galerie Maeght in Paris. He won the Prize for Sculpture at the 1958 Venice Biennale and, in the same year, made his first visit to the United States, where he met James Johnson Sweeney, Mies van der Rohe and the composer Edgar Varèse. In 1960 he was awarded the Kandinsky Prize. He visited Greece in 1963 and the following year won the Prize for Sculpture at the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh. In 1966 he met the philosopher Martin Heidegger, for whom he illustrated the book Der Kunst und der Raum.
In '69 he began creating a sculpture for the UNESCO building in Paris and the following year he executed a commission for the World Bank in Washington. In 1971 he was Visiting Professor at the Carpenter Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the same year he held a solo exhibition at the Sala Gaspar in Barcelona. In 1979 he shared the Andrew W. Mellon Prize with Willem de Kooning, followed by a major exhibition at the Museum of Art at the Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh. In 1980 he exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. In 1990 the Venice Biennale dedicated a solo show to him at Ca' Pesaro. The following year he received the Praemium Imperiale from the Japan Art Association. In 2000, the Chillida-Leku museum was inaugurated in Hernani, Gipuzkoa. He passed away in his residence on Mount Igueldo on 19 August 2002.