Hernani (Gipuzkoa), Mar 30 (EFE).- The monumental piece of 13 tons of concrete Meeting Place IV, by Eduardo Chillida, “gravitates” since Thursday in the wooded area that surrounds the Zabalgana farmhouse in Chillida Leku, where it shares space with other works by the Gipuzkoan sculptor and shows his connection with the industrial world and with nature.
The piece was removed on March 3 from its location in the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, where it has been since Chillida donated it in 1982 after the commission from the Gipuzkoan town of Azpeitia did not go ahead and it rested. in the warehouse where it was made.
The installation in the fields of Chillida Leku has been a project of this museum that will allow the sculpture to be contemplated in a natural environment while the expansion works of the Museum of Fine Arts are carried out, scheduled for 2024, and that will serve as a prologue to the artist’s centenary celebrations that year.
Meeting Place IV, carried out in 1973, is part of a series of seven works designed to be installed in public places, all of them made of concrete, except for two, which were made of corten steel and wood, and which the Gipuzkoan sculptor worked in collaboration with the civil engineer, José Antonio Fernández Ordóñez.
Framed within the Zero Gravity program, the piece hangs from steel cables in a metal structure and rises a few centimeters from the ground so that the forcefulness of its lines is suspended in the open space.
Its location in Chillida Leku, surrounded by forest and the greenery of the soil, highlights the forcefulness of the work in which the relationship with the industrial world that the sculptor always maintained is evident.
“It has been a thing of fate that, coinciding with the celebration of the centenary in 2024, the Fine Arts was under construction and Chillida Leku was able to host this piece, the only one made of concrete that it exhibits”, Luis Chillida pointed out.
“It has been a somewhat crazy mission to suspend 13 tons of concrete on steel cables, but we have been lucky to have the collaboration of the companies,” said Luis Chillida.
The transfer operation, of great technical complexity, has been the result of the collaboration of institutions and technology centers such as Tecnalia, which has been in charge of designing the structure from which the piece hangs, and companies Loire Gestamp, which has supported the operation together with six other companies in the territory.
mz/cgc/ram
(Photo / Video)
