Eduardo Chillida. La gravedad insistente at Les Abattoirs
In collaboration with the Fundación Eduardo Chillida-Pilar Belzunce, Les Abattoirs, Musée – Frac Occitanie Toulouse offers a monographic exhibition dedicated to Spanish sculptor Eduardo Chillida (1924-2002) until August 26th, 2018.
Four rooms of the basement of Les Abattoirs host more than sixty works created between 1952 and 2002: sculptures, maquettes, prints, drawings, posters, artist editions and photographic archives. La gravedad insistente (“Insistent gravity” in English) let’s us discover Chillida’s work through the exploration of its recurring themes, such as gravity, weight or the relationship between art, nature and public space.
Surrounded by the fascinating architecture of Les Abattoirs, with its sometime vertiginous high ceilings, the exhibition gravitates around Beaulieu (1991), a 2.5 ton steel sculpture that defies nature’s laws by being suspended for the first time inside a museum. But if monumental projects, within the public space or nature, characterize the artist’s work – remember his famous Wind Combs facing the Atlantic Ocean on the Bay of San Sebastian in Spain – natural elements, light, and matter are just as important in his work. The “white room” is a visual delight with textures both organic and fragile, such as alabaster that absorbs and reflects the surrounding light, or the series of collages Gravitations, exclusively made of handmade paper and thread.
This exceptional exhibition shows how, throughout his career, Eduardo Chillida was able to renew the art of sculpture.
Eduardo Chillida. La gravedad insistente
Les Abattoirs, Musée – Frac Occitanie Toulouse
Until August 26th, 2018
