VITORIA-GASTEIZ.- The Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basque Country, Artium Museoa (Artium Museum), presents the exhibition entitled Chillida. Applied Uses (A1 Gallery, up to 2 February 2025). This exhibition presents Eduardo Chillida's (1924-2002) work as an illustrator and creator of two-dimensional icons in a variety of formats, whether as part of his own exhibitions or from commissions from public and private associations and institutions. Chillida. Applied uses, curated by Peio Aguirre, explores the direct or indirect connections between the sculptor's flat forms and graphic design, posters, textile art and precious metalwork, but also brand identity and marketing, and creates a space to understand the social and political, but also corporate, legacy of this artist. The exhibition is being held to mark the centenary of the artist’s birth, in conjunction with Chillida Leku and with the support of Mondragon. To coincide with the exhibition, Artium Museoa has released a publication with original text by the curator.
Chillida. Applied Uses brings together over 70 objects in an exhibition that explores what Aguirre calls «the expanded, repeating universe of Chillida's forms and shapes. A Chillida scattered across the public sphere»: graphic works, drawings and sketches, collages, textiles, posters, publications and other items such as stickers and marketing materials.
The pieces include catalogues, brochures and posters for exhibitions by Eduardo Chillida, logos created for organisations such as the University of the Basque Country or the Reina Sofía Museum, posters for events such as the 1972 Munich Olympic Games and 1982 World Cup in Spain, or for peace rallies in the Basque Country or protests against nuclear power on the Basque coast. The exhibition also features the documentary film by José Luis Bakedano, entitled Chillida at home: a portrait, which was produced in 1983, and the sculpture Mano, which is part of the Artium Museoa Collection.
As Peio Aguirre points out in the essay contained in the publication that accompanies the exhibition, «The hypothesis here is that there is a “useful” Chillida through the many designs of emblems, logos and stamps that the artist produced during his lifetime. A Chillida known to society both for his reproducible and ubiquitous nature and for the aura of his “original” works. The phrase Chillida: Applied Uses refers to this state of the sculptor’s forms when these are flattened and come into direct or indirect contact with graphic design, poster design, textile art and jewellery, or with brand identity and marketing».
Eduardo Chillida's career was marked by his prolific output as a sculptor, but also as the creator of a wealth of graphic works. «The importance of drawing in his early days determined a round trip from the proto-ideas of his small drawings to sculpture in order to embark from there on a path back to the flat surface in graphic work. This principle of the interpenetration of forms, as one of the meanings of art in Chillida, is then transferred to the relationship between various artistic disciplines». Aguirre points out how «his recognisable figures ultimately multiply into simple units of communication and infiltrate the mass media».
The pieces being exhibited at Chillida. Applied Uses come from institutions such as State of Eduardo Chillida (his estate) and Hauser & Wirth, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, the Reina Sofía National Museum and Art Centre, the Basque Film Library and the University of the Basque Country, among others, as well as from private collections.
