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Lot Essay
"Space must be conceived in terms of plastic volume, instead of being fixed with the help of lines onto the imaginary surface of the paper. I am unable to imagine it other than in three dimensions. That is the way form acquires its structure. Form springs spontaneously from the needs of the space that builds its dwelling like an animal in its shell. Just like this animal, I am also an architect of the void." (Eduardo Chillida 1981, cited in Chillida 1948-1998 Exh.cat., Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofiá, Madrid 1998, p. 62).
Besaka is a personalised title that Chillida has given to one of his Estelas. Estela ("Stele") is the title that Chillida has given to many of his upright standing steel columns. A stele is an ancient form, traditionally a column or pillar-like tombstone that marked a gravesite or was erected as a means of paying homage to a person's life and achievements.
Although often unspecific to any particular individual, Chillida's stele retain their commemorative nature in the sense that they are vertical metal sculptures which through their verticality and physical articulation of space clearly assert a human presence. The vertical column of the stele indicates the human, for in nature, there are no straight lines; the straight line only exists in the human imagination and through a human's interaction with the world.
Like a monument to the human will, Chillida's stelae stand proudly vertical piercing the infinite emptiness surrounding them. In this Estele the focal point of the work is at the apex of the column where three elegant semi-circular forms interlock in a careful play of form to encase an area of the spatial void, within the sculpture itself - so to speak. Playing with the contrast between interior and exterior form and the interdependence of each, these curvilinear iron forms embrace and articulate the nature of the spatial void in much the same way as the grasping hands of the figure in Giacometti's 1926 sculpture Hands holding the Void.
That there are three of these arm-like forms is significant because for Chillida, the number three is the core number, the one which encapsulates all possibilities and supercedes all other numbers. "The number three is relevant in all my work." He has commented, "It is the most important number of all. The most powerful, the simplest, the humblest, in short, the greatest of all. I have always considered three the number of music. It is also my number as a sculptor …St Augustine also discussed the issue. He saw the number three just as I feel it." (Ibid, p. 70).
Establishing a careful balance between solid form and empty space, each element helps to define the other. The strong vertical solidity of Estele establishes the void in the viewer's mind as a material entity while at the same time the implied enclosure of a part of this void by the interlocking of forms at the top of the sculpture, breathes life into the dense material nature of the solid metal sculpture. In so doing, Chillida suggests that it is through this interplay between form and space, (the absence of form) that the resultant shape of the work has defined itself.
"Space? Sculpture is a function of space. I don't mean the space outside the form, which surrounds the volume and in which the forms live, but the space generated by the forms, which lives within them and which is more effective the more unoticeably it acts. You could compare it to the breath that swells and contracts forms that opens up their space -inaccessible to and hidden from the outside world - to view. I do not see it as something abstract, but a reality as solid as the volume that envelops it." (Eduardo Chillida "Aphorismen" cited in Chillida, Exh. cat., Berlin 1991, p. 118).
Besaka is a personalised title that Chillida has given to one of his Estelas. Estela ("Stele") is the title that Chillida has given to many of his upright standing steel columns. A stele is an ancient form, traditionally a column or pillar-like tombstone that marked a gravesite or was erected as a means of paying homage to a person's life and achievements.
Although often unspecific to any particular individual, Chillida's stele retain their commemorative nature in the sense that they are vertical metal sculptures which through their verticality and physical articulation of space clearly assert a human presence. The vertical column of the stele indicates the human, for in nature, there are no straight lines; the straight line only exists in the human imagination and through a human's interaction with the world.
Like a monument to the human will, Chillida's stelae stand proudly vertical piercing the infinite emptiness surrounding them. In this Estele the focal point of the work is at the apex of the column where three elegant semi-circular forms interlock in a careful play of form to encase an area of the spatial void, within the sculpture itself - so to speak. Playing with the contrast between interior and exterior form and the interdependence of each, these curvilinear iron forms embrace and articulate the nature of the spatial void in much the same way as the grasping hands of the figure in Giacometti's 1926 sculpture Hands holding the Void.
That there are three of these arm-like forms is significant because for Chillida, the number three is the core number, the one which encapsulates all possibilities and supercedes all other numbers. "The number three is relevant in all my work." He has commented, "It is the most important number of all. The most powerful, the simplest, the humblest, in short, the greatest of all. I have always considered three the number of music. It is also my number as a sculptor …St Augustine also discussed the issue. He saw the number three just as I feel it." (Ibid, p. 70).
Establishing a careful balance between solid form and empty space, each element helps to define the other. The strong vertical solidity of Estele establishes the void in the viewer's mind as a material entity while at the same time the implied enclosure of a part of this void by the interlocking of forms at the top of the sculpture, breathes life into the dense material nature of the solid metal sculpture. In so doing, Chillida suggests that it is through this interplay between form and space, (the absence of form) that the resultant shape of the work has defined itself.
"Space? Sculpture is a function of space. I don't mean the space outside the form, which surrounds the volume and in which the forms live, but the space generated by the forms, which lives within them and which is more effective the more unoticeably it acts. You could compare it to the breath that swells and contracts forms that opens up their space -inaccessible to and hidden from the outside world - to view. I do not see it as something abstract, but a reality as solid as the volume that envelops it." (Eduardo Chillida "Aphorismen" cited in Chillida, Exh. cat., Berlin 1991, p. 118).