The United States revitalizes Chillida and removes his great works from their museum storage.

Eduardo Chillida (1924-2002) had a strong love affair with the United States in his early years. It was a country that took a chance on him in the 1960s when he was just starting out on the international circuit, thanks in large part to the gallery owner Aimé Maeght , who had already exhibited with him in Paris in the 1950s and who opened the doors to the other side of the Atlantic.

The Guggenheim Museum (1959), the Museum of Modern Art (1960), the Carnegie Institute (1961), and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (1962) were the first to organize group exhibitions, until his first major solo exhibition in the country took place in 1966 (at the Fine Arts in Houston). American collectors began to buy his work, creating a significant corpus of the artist in the United States that would be reinforced in the 1970s, making him one of the great icons of Spanish art at a time when Spain was rarely open to the rest of the world. Eurovision was almost enough for us.

“My grandfather became very attractive to major American collections due to the historical moment we were experiencing,” Mikel Chillida , currently director of development at the Chillida Leku Museum in Hernani, tells this newspaper by telephone. “The Second World War had just ended, Europe was devastated, and at that moment, sculpture became the primary means of expression. There was a search for materiality , for something tangible, something constructed in space. And that appealed greatly to the American market, making Chillida one of the greatest exponents of this period of reconstruction. Sculpture, so material, so physical, so based on that matter that constructs space, became very relevant,” he added.

An important network of contacts

Chillida had met Maeght in Paris, where he lived between 1948 and 1951, through the artist Pablo Palazuelo , and immediately organized a group exhibition for him (1950) that put him in the spotlight. Maeght was already one of the most important patrons in Paris by then, having enjoyed enormous success with the gallery he opened in 1937, thanks also to his friendship with the painter Matisse . By 1956, he was organizing his first major solo exhibition. It was at that moment that everything would take off. Chillida would make a strong entry into the gallery owner and patron's catalog, a very good portfolio that also included Joan Miró, Kandinsky, Braque, Glacometti , as well as Tapies and Palazuelo, among other important artists of the 20th century. And from there, the leap to the United States, which was the great Mecca that everyone was looking for after World War II. The United States was the splendor, the glory (and where, obviously, the money was to be found).

"There was a search for something tangible, which is why Chillida became one of the greatest exponents of this stage of reconstruction."

The Basque sculptor would find all this brilliance in the 1960s and 1970s with exhibitions and purchases throughout the Americas .

The gallery owner's death in 1981 marked a decline in the Basque artist's work in the US, a rift that became more evident in the 1990s and early 2000s, even leading to some of the acquired pieces returning to museum storage to gather dust... Until the mid-2010s, when interest in the work was revived, exploding this month with the opening at the San Diego Museum of Art in California of the exhibition Convergence. The exhibition brings together more than 85 pieces , partly from American collections and partly from Spain, and which, according to his grandson Mikel, is the largest and most important exhibition by the sculptor in the United States in the last fifty years. It will be on view until February 8, 2026.

“It revitalizes it quite a bit, since the great momentum it had in the early sixties, which lasted until the 1970s and 1975, hadn't been maintained. Even many of the works that belong to these great American institutions weren't on display right now. For example, Abesti gogorra no. 3 , which is a tribute to Luis Martín Santos, and which is a spectacular oak work, more than 3 meters high—in other words, a huge piece of work—and which belongs to the Art Institute of Chicago, they had it in storage. And by having requested it now and having it shown in California, the Chicago museum has already shown its intention to have it back on display when it returns,” Mikel comments.

The idea for this major exhibition, reviving Chillida's work in the United States and tying it in with the celebrations for the sculptor's centennial, arose four years ago after a visit by members of the San Diego Museum of Art's board of trustees to the Chillida Leku. There, discussions arose about the artist's return to a major retrospective after so much time away from the American circuit. When the proposal was finalized, the curatorship fell to Rachel Jans , who was tasked with working on the exhibition outline, identifying the works that needed to be borrowed from American collections and those that would be transferred from Spain. "From that point on, our desire was to collaborate and lend all the works they deemed appropriate for the show," says Mikel, who describes this exhibition as "a grand dialogue between early works, rarely seen in Europe , and works from the artist's second period, rarely seen in America. A wonderful dialogue that also has a very important symbolism between the Pacific and the Cantabrian Seas."

Precisely, in it you can see the series Peine del Viento Through various sculptures and drawings, and a virtual reality experience that allows visitors to travel to the coast of San Sebastián. The largest works haven't been shipped—some weigh up to 64 tons on the Chillida Leku—but they aren't small either, with some weighing just 2 tons. Of course, they all traveled by boat ... due to weight issues.

Private (and institutional) support

This exhibition commemorates the sculptor's centenary, although there are still a few details that Mikel doesn't want to reveal yet, in order to avoid any surprises. All the events have gone very well, and, according to the artist's grandson, the dust has long since settled that led to the closure of the Chillida Leku in 2011 due to financial problems and underfunding, as criticized by the family at the time. It didn't reopen until 2019, with the help of the Swiss modern and contemporary art firm Hauser & Wirth. The museum currently relies on private contributions and public sponsorship.

“Right now, Chillida is highly valued and cared for by everyone. After all, we're talking about an artist who died in 2002, and back then there was a desire to preserve everything very strictly, just as it was. But, little by little, time is also telling you that Chillida belongs to everyone; he's a universal heritage. Today, there's support at all levels , very consolidated and very important from all cultural, institutional, and public stakeholders. I think it's a very beautiful moment for Chillida and for Pili, for the aitonas (grandparents). And we must keep it that way, so alive, so accessible, and so close to everyone,” concludes his grandson, Mikel.