Galerie Lelong opens solo exhibitions of works by Kiki Smith aand Eduardo Chillida

PARIS.— Kiki Smith is a multidisciplinary artist, working in sculpture, drawing, printmaking, photography, objects, stained glass and tapestry. Her body of work has developed with remarkable coherence for over four decades. Far from fragmenting her output, this diversity of media instead reveals a strong underlying theme that runs through her practice: the continuity and unity of life. Humans, animals and plants are linked in an unbroken chain, stretching from the microcosm of the cell to cosmic infinity. A thread that the artist can draw from observing the bark of birch trees near her home, the pigeons in Manhattan’s parks, a full moon and the Milky Way, but also from reading Lewis Carroll, an anatomy book, the poetry of Emily Dickinson, tales and legends… From all this, with utter sincerity—because she cannot do otherwise, she says—she crafts and weaves a visual narrative that grows ever stronger and richer with time.

This exhibition marks the artist’s tenth show at Galerie Lelong, the continuation of a 25-year collaboration. It brings together bronze sculptures, two large stained-glass windows, drawings and an imposing print. The artist has chosen the title FLIGHT. It therefore comes as no surprise to find birds with multiple symbolic meanings in this exhibition: majestic eagles, messenger doves and clairvoyant owls. As is often the case with Kiki Smith, nature acts as a mirror for humanity. The artist projects the feelings that drive her—fears, desires or dreams—onto these animal figures.

Kiki Smith was born in 1954 in Germany. She has lived and worked in New York since the 1970s. Her work is featured in numerous collections, including those of MoMA, New York; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Tate Britain, London; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

A major exhibition, Être ici | Maintenant | Partout, will be dedicated to her from June 13th at MO.CO. in Montpellier.

Eduardo Chillida
Selected prints
May 21 – July 11, 2026
At the bookshop

Eduardo Chillida (1924-2002), one of the most remarkable sculptors of the second half of the 20th Century, never stopped examining space and shape, working with a variety of materials, including iron, wood, granite, alabaster, clay, as well as more contemporary materials such as concrete and steel. He also drew, cut-out, pasted and engraved. Chillida’s work on paper always occupied an important place in his creative process. The prints exhibited at the bookshop illustrate his need to address full and empty spaces in a two- dimensional work. The density of the material is illustrated by the black; its absence is the white. At times, Chillida seeks the opposite effect. When he engraves, he traces the lines but he also studies the defects in the plate, creates others, selects the grain and the texture of the paper – matt, thick or smooth – and adopts sometimes surprising page layouts. His prints are dense, limited, and demanding. They have been exhibited in several museums and compiled in a catalogue raisonné in ten volumes. For this new exhibition at the Lelong Gallery, at 13 rue de Téhéran, where Chillida has been exhibited from 1950 onwards, the focus is on rare etchings from the 1960s and 70s.