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Lot Essay
This work is registered in the archives of the Museo Chillida-Leku, under number 1960.002.
'I have not seen the wind, I have seen the clouds move.
I have not seen time, I have seen the leaves fall.' (Chillida - notebook pages, cited in Chillida, exh. cat., Pittsburg 1979, pp. 21-23).
Rumor de limites VI is one of Chillida's finest and most ambitious early iron sculptures. It is part of a unique series of seven sculptures - five in iron and two in steel (his first ever works in this metal) - poetically entitled Rumor de limites (Murmur of Limits) that he made between 1959 and 1960.
The poetic and often metaphysical titles that Chillida gave his works reflect closely the aesthetic aims he had for his work and the deep sense of almost mystical or transcendent beauty that they evoke. All of Chillida's work, but especially those he made in metal are an invocation of what he described as 'the limit'. 'The limit' for Chillida was a point or place beyond dimensions where, like the language of the sea crashing against the rocky San Sebastian coastline or the meeting point of sea and sky on the horizon, elemental opposites meet and define themselves with timeless clarity. It is the point where solid 'embraces' void and where space (which Chillida once described as a very quick material, 'so quick that you can't see it') is given form, definition and even meaning by the much heavier and slower materials such as wrought iron permeating and articulating it.
'The limit', Chillida said, 'is the real protagonist of space just as the present is the protagonist of time. The past and the future are contemporary because they are contemporary in the present. The communication of both is in the present. In the same way, the present is a limit between the past and the future, but there is no dimension to the present but nevertheless, everything happens in the present. It is a limit like the limit in space between space and the form around it. Everything in space happens at this limit, and there is no dimension either to the limit in space. The limit is the protagonist of space' (Chillida cited in the film Chillida, RM Arts and ETB Euskal Telebista (Basque Television) 1985).
Chillida's concept of space and of the void - that infinite expanse of emptiness often invoked by the reaching, grasping or enclosing forms of his sculpture - is one that has its roots in the artist's initial training as an architect. For Chillida, space is not only a 'very quick' material and as such intimately connected, as Einstein has shown, with time, it is also, as a material, integrally related to form. In the same way that a simple material form in iron can grow and develop in such a way as to define itself by the way that it interacts with and articulates the space around it, space too, articulates and is defined by the form of the heavier and slower materials/forms it encounters. It is this symbiotic meeting place of apparent opposites that is made most clear through the art of sculpture and what is meant by Chillida when he refers to 'the limit'.
Rooted in reality and in the elemental nature of his materials it is probably for this reason there is always a pervasive sense of the organic running through Chillida's work even when the forms he has adopted are at their most geometric or abstract. This is particularly true of his iron sculptures which never fail to invoke a sense of the primal nature and ancient mystery of the smithy's art. Rumor de limites VI with its complex and compressed construction of form branching out into space in a seemingly natural development or progression of rectangular form is a powerful example of this common tendency in Chillida's work.
Chillida once described his work as being like the fruit of a tree rooted in the Basque soil of his homeland and this natural analogy is typical of his work. 'Form' he said, '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 Sofia, Madrid 1998, p. 62).
In the Rumor de limites series Chillida attempted to expand on the poetic contrast of iron and space that he had explored previously in such series as Yungue de sueños (Anvil of Dreams) by also invoking sound. As with his greatest and best-known work, the Wind Combs - sculptures through which the infinite space of the void rushes in the form of the wind that brushes against the San Sebastian coastline (making a sound as it does so) - his Rumor de limites aim to express a sense of this mystical 'sound' or 'song' of 'the limit'. Entitled 'Murmur of Limits' this series of sculptures is one of several in Chillida's oeuvre to invoke the sound or even music produced by the mystic union of space and form; others include Múisica de las seferas, Espacios sonoros, Múisca de las constellaciones and Canto rudo named after St John of the Cross' poem Silent music.
Sound and music are, after all, merely vibrations in space, so the link with Chillida's sculpture which he conceived of as being merely material vibrations in space made according to his own intuitive feeling for his materials is close. Like a musical composer or a poet, Chillida' sculptures are abstract compositions, fugues or poems in space and are titled as such.
The most complex and intricate of the series Rumor de limites VI is also the finest, taking the meandering linear theme of the earlier works in the series and combining it with the enclosed folding layers of angular form that distinguish the latter works. Reaching out, permutating and folding in on itself in almost every conceivable direction, the iron forms of the sculpture seem to develop and unfold in the same way that a flower opens. This sense of organic growth is heightened by the three branch-like iron bars seemingly sprouting through the heart of the work and reaching out into space. Seeming to be constantly moving, caught in a state of perpetually development as if attempting to trap space at the same time as it is entrapped by it, Rumor de limites VI is one of the most animated and intertwined works in Chillida's entire oeuvre.
'I have not seen the wind, I have seen the clouds move.
I have not seen time, I have seen the leaves fall.' (Chillida - notebook pages, cited in Chillida, exh. cat., Pittsburg 1979, pp. 21-23).
Rumor de limites VI is one of Chillida's finest and most ambitious early iron sculptures. It is part of a unique series of seven sculptures - five in iron and two in steel (his first ever works in this metal) - poetically entitled Rumor de limites (Murmur of Limits) that he made between 1959 and 1960.
The poetic and often metaphysical titles that Chillida gave his works reflect closely the aesthetic aims he had for his work and the deep sense of almost mystical or transcendent beauty that they evoke. All of Chillida's work, but especially those he made in metal are an invocation of what he described as 'the limit'. 'The limit' for Chillida was a point or place beyond dimensions where, like the language of the sea crashing against the rocky San Sebastian coastline or the meeting point of sea and sky on the horizon, elemental opposites meet and define themselves with timeless clarity. It is the point where solid 'embraces' void and where space (which Chillida once described as a very quick material, 'so quick that you can't see it') is given form, definition and even meaning by the much heavier and slower materials such as wrought iron permeating and articulating it.
'The limit', Chillida said, 'is the real protagonist of space just as the present is the protagonist of time. The past and the future are contemporary because they are contemporary in the present. The communication of both is in the present. In the same way, the present is a limit between the past and the future, but there is no dimension to the present but nevertheless, everything happens in the present. It is a limit like the limit in space between space and the form around it. Everything in space happens at this limit, and there is no dimension either to the limit in space. The limit is the protagonist of space' (Chillida cited in the film Chillida, RM Arts and ETB Euskal Telebista (Basque Television) 1985).
Chillida's concept of space and of the void - that infinite expanse of emptiness often invoked by the reaching, grasping or enclosing forms of his sculpture - is one that has its roots in the artist's initial training as an architect. For Chillida, space is not only a 'very quick' material and as such intimately connected, as Einstein has shown, with time, it is also, as a material, integrally related to form. In the same way that a simple material form in iron can grow and develop in such a way as to define itself by the way that it interacts with and articulates the space around it, space too, articulates and is defined by the form of the heavier and slower materials/forms it encounters. It is this symbiotic meeting place of apparent opposites that is made most clear through the art of sculpture and what is meant by Chillida when he refers to 'the limit'.
Rooted in reality and in the elemental nature of his materials it is probably for this reason there is always a pervasive sense of the organic running through Chillida's work even when the forms he has adopted are at their most geometric or abstract. This is particularly true of his iron sculptures which never fail to invoke a sense of the primal nature and ancient mystery of the smithy's art. Rumor de limites VI with its complex and compressed construction of form branching out into space in a seemingly natural development or progression of rectangular form is a powerful example of this common tendency in Chillida's work.
Chillida once described his work as being like the fruit of a tree rooted in the Basque soil of his homeland and this natural analogy is typical of his work. 'Form' he said, '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 Sofia, Madrid 1998, p. 62).
In the Rumor de limites series Chillida attempted to expand on the poetic contrast of iron and space that he had explored previously in such series as Yungue de sueños (Anvil of Dreams) by also invoking sound. As with his greatest and best-known work, the Wind Combs - sculptures through which the infinite space of the void rushes in the form of the wind that brushes against the San Sebastian coastline (making a sound as it does so) - his Rumor de limites aim to express a sense of this mystical 'sound' or 'song' of 'the limit'. Entitled 'Murmur of Limits' this series of sculptures is one of several in Chillida's oeuvre to invoke the sound or even music produced by the mystic union of space and form; others include Múisica de las seferas, Espacios sonoros, Múisca de las constellaciones and Canto rudo named after St John of the Cross' poem Silent music.
Sound and music are, after all, merely vibrations in space, so the link with Chillida's sculpture which he conceived of as being merely material vibrations in space made according to his own intuitive feeling for his materials is close. Like a musical composer or a poet, Chillida' sculptures are abstract compositions, fugues or poems in space and are titled as such.
The most complex and intricate of the series Rumor de limites VI is also the finest, taking the meandering linear theme of the earlier works in the series and combining it with the enclosed folding layers of angular form that distinguish the latter works. Reaching out, permutating and folding in on itself in almost every conceivable direction, the iron forms of the sculpture seem to develop and unfold in the same way that a flower opens. This sense of organic growth is heightened by the three branch-like iron bars seemingly sprouting through the heart of the work and reaching out into space. Seeming to be constantly moving, caught in a state of perpetually development as if attempting to trap space at the same time as it is entrapped by it, Rumor de limites VI is one of the most animated and intertwined works in Chillida's entire oeuvre.