A 20th-century sculpture with ancient roots: Eduardo Chillida’s Locmariaquer VII

In the mid-1980s, the abstract sculptor Eduardo Chillida took a trip to Brittany in north-west France with his wife, Pilar. They stayed in a small coastal village called Locmariaquer. Chillida was there seeking a public location in which to place one of the monumental sculptures that were becoming a hallmark of the mature phase of his career. Examples include Elogio del horizonte (1990) and Monumento a la tolerancia (1992), which he installed in the Spanish cities of Gijón and Seville respectively.

Like Chillida’s home town of San Sebastián, in the Basque region of northern Spain, Locmariaquer is located on the Bay of Biscay. It is probably best known for its complex of Neolithic constructions, elements of which date back to 4700 B.C.

This is a popular tourist site, and though Chillida’s plan to install a monumental work in Brittany ultimately came to nothing, his trip to the region would inspire an important series of sculptures. Locmariaquer VII, the largest work in the series, is being offered in the 20th/21st Century: London Evening Sale at Christie’s on 9 October 2024.

Standing just over a metre in height, it consists of what appear to be two cubic forms stacked one on top of the other, looking rather like open boxes. The work was ingeniously created from a single sheet of iron, through a process that included cutting, folding and welding. The planes of metal create intriguing spaces, thanks to an abundance of supple bends.

Chillida had taken to using iron early in his career. It was a metal strongly associated with the Basque Country — one which, historically, had helped create the region’s shipbuilding wealth.

The sculptor enjoyed the buzz of working in local forges, captivated by the darkness, the heat of the flames, the colour of red-hot iron, and the sound of hammer on anvil. It’s worth adding that he regarded his creative process as one of communion between himself and the metal. ‘I work with the material, but the material also works with me,’ he said. ‘I ask if it agrees with me, because it also has a voice… I’m not going to be vulgar and decide everything myself.’

In Locmariaquer VII, there is a remarkably tensile quality to the iron. It is deftly dematerialised, seeming as pliable as if the sculpture were made out of wax. Chillida said he often liked ‘to rebel against Isaac Newton’ — by which he meant challenge the laws of gravity, by making works that have a sense of weightlessness about them.

There are a total of 10 sculptures in the ‘Locmariaquer’ series, all made between 1987 and 1994. Chillida said they owe their inspiration to an ancient axe he had seen for sale when he was walking through the eponymous town. He suddenly imagined giving the axe’s head a few cuts and folding it back in on itself to create an internal space. Key to the resulting sculpture series was Chillida’s exploration of the theme of the fold, and the dialogue between interior and exterior spaces.

Though he never explicitly said so, one can also see parallels between his works and the megaliths of Locmariaquer. Three structures predominate there — the Great Broken Menhir of Er-Grah, the Table des Marchands (Merchants’ Table) and the Er-Grah tumulus — and it’s the second of these that is perhaps most interesting in connection with Chillida.

The Table des Marchands is a passage grave — that is, a tomb consisting of a roofed burial chamber set in the centre of a barrow and approached via a narrow entrance passage — and the atmospheric transition from exterior to interior is evoked in Chillida’s series by the planes of metal and the delimited spaces they create.

In the specific case of Locmariaquer VII, its size suggests there’s something architectural about it. Before deciding to become an artist, as a young man Chillida had actually studied architecture. In later life, however, he came to see one key difference between that discipline and his own. ‘The architect has to have many answers,’ he said, ‘while for the sculptor it’s enough to have many questions.’

Chillida created Locmariaquer VII in 1989. He was then in his mid-sixties and receiving ever-greater international acclaim. He would be honoured with a solo exhibition at Ca’ Pesaro during the Venice Biennale of 1990, and a year later be awarded the prestigious Praemium Imperiale arts prize by Japan’s imperial family.

In 2000, outside San Sebastián, he opened Chillida Leku, a 27-acre sculpture park showing his work. Two other pieces from the ‘Locmariaquer’ series are part of its collection.

Chillida’s sculptures invite prolonged viewing, and resist any single interpretation. They are open to multiple meanings — something reflected, in many cases, by their physical openness. Space is never an empty retainer for Chillida; it always has a key role in defining his works.

The tension between body and space is one of several that exist in Locmariaquer VII. Others include that between weight and weightlessness; support and collapse; interior and exterior; protection and exposure; and abstraction and figuration.

When the sculpture was first exhibited, at Sidney Janis Gallery in New York in December 1989, Michael Brenson, art critic for The New York Times, spoke of such tensions in terms of the ‘push-pull’ conceived by an artist of ‘exceptional sensibility’.

One final tension worth mentioning, of course, is Chillida’s ancient inspiration for a sculpture that’s resoundingly contemporary.

The 20th/21st Century: London Evening Sale is on view at Christie’s in London until 9 October 2024. Explore Christie’s 20th/21st Century autumn auction season in London and Paris, until 22 October

Read more about Eduardo Chillida as we mark the 100th anniversary of the artist’s birth