Bilbao (EFE) ).
There he will meet with his “sister” works while the expansion works of the Bilbao art gallery last.
While the sculpture was removed to be placed in a truck, the director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Miguel Zugaza, stressed that this Friday is “an important day for the museum.”
The reason is the transfer of one of his most emblematic works, which can continue to be visited during the duration of the works “in an exceptional context, which is the place where Eduardo decided to keep an important part of his work.”
Centenary of the birth of Chillida
The initiative, as he has highlighted, serves as a prologue to the commemoration of the centenary of the birth of the San Sebastian sculptor in 2024.
For Mikel Chillida, the artist’s grandson, it represents an “exciting, beautiful event, on very symbolic dates of great emotional charge” such as the centenary of his grandfather’s birth.
Coinciding with the commemoration, the sculpture will be for the first time at Chillida Leku, where her “sisters” are, as she has said.
The installation of the sculpture has been an initiative of Chillida Leku in a project that has created synergies between the world of art and the industrial and technological sector of the Basque Country.
This has been revealed by the director of the Gipuzkoan space, Mireia Massagué.
As he explained, a work team has been set up together with the Tecnalia technology center, the machine tool manufacturer Loire Gestamp and Grúas Gohierri, among others, to carry out the project.
The initiative also has the support of the Gipuzkoa Provincial Council.
“meeting place”
The work is the fourth in the series made up of seven pieces generically titled “Place of Meetings”, made by Chillida in collaboration with the engineer José Antonio Fernández Ordoñez in the decade between 1964 and 1974.
“Place of meetings IV”, in which the artist used reinforced concrete, was donated to the Bilbao museum in 1982 by Chillida himself.
It was then located on the old ground floor of the modern building and since 2000 its location is the current Chillida square to which that building opens.
Massagué has pointed out that it is a piece designed “not to be moved”, but to be suspended, for which reason a special study has been necessary to guarantee its transfer under safe conditions.
En Chillida Leku
In Chillida Leku it will be installed in the part of the forest, in whose preparation work is being done so that everything is ready for the opening day on the 30th.
His installation is part of Chillida Leku’s “Zero Gravity” exhibition, which explores the concept of levitation and the fight against the law of gravity.
The work that travels from Bilbao rises a few centimeters from the ground and this slight elevation “cancels” the weight and makes matter levitate.
Back to Bilbao
Upon his return to Bilbao in 2024, the sculpture will return to another location inside the museum, “in the space of the new atrium, which will generate the expansion of Foster and Uriarte”, explained Zugaza.
There he will revalidate the sculptor’s intention to mark a civic meeting place, in this case, with art.
The removal and transfer of the sculpture have brought a surprise since “it has been discovered that -the piece- is a little lighter” than previously thought, according to the artist’s grandson.
After measuring it with the latest available technologies, the work weighs 13.5 tons and not the 17 that appeared in the archives. “It has diminished a bit” in Bilbao, Mikel Chillida joked.
As he has indicated, this circumstance “has surprised us a bit for the better because it makes the transfer operation a bit easier.” EFE
