Antoni Tàpies and Eduardo Chillida

CarrerasMugica is pleased to present the exhibition tàpies : chillida. un diálogo from the 13th of December to the 15th of February, in which 40 works made between 1955 and 2002 can be seen. They have been collected in a catalogue with text by Alfonso de la Torre.

Although they were born in different years, Antoni Tàpies in 1923 and Eduardo Chillida in 1924, they were less than a month apart in age. Their paths crossed on several occasions throughout their careers. Paris in the 1950s was a city of great cultural activity and a pole of attraction for many artists: Chillida was at the Collège d’Espagne between 1948 and 1950 and stayed for another year in Villaines-sous-Bois, while Tàpies arrived at the end of 1950 and stayed in Saint- Could until mid-1951. Also, in 1958 they both participated in the XXIX Venice Biennale where Eduardo Chillida received the Grand Prize for Sculpture and Antoni Tàpies the David E. Bright Foundation Prize and the UNESCO Special Prize. In 1960 the exhibition ‘New Spanish Painting and Sculpture’ held at the MoMA in New York and curated by Frank O’Hara brought them together again with other artists.

Their artistic practices, although very different, also share common motivations. As Alfonso de la Torre states in the introduction to the catalogue, Antoni Tàpies and Eduardo Chillida ‘… were travellers between the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional’. The work of both is marked by meditation and a certain spiritual intent, and both often look to oriental art. The interest in space and its limits, void, light, matter and silence, among others, is common to both of them. And earth and matter, the chamotte earth with which Tàpies had his first contact in Hans Spinner’s workshop in 1981 ‘… thanks to the insistence of Aimé Maeght, as well as conversations with Chillida. Both never ceased to encourage him to work with ceramics’. (1)

During the last two years, 2023 and 2024, the centenary of the birth of both artists has been commemorated with various exhibitions, including Antoni Tàpies. La pratique de l’art en Bozar (Brussels), Antoni Tàpies. Retrospective at the Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid), Eduardo Chillida Convergence at the San Diego Museum of Art and, in the near future, Eduardo Chillida at the Museo Nacional de Escultura (Valladolid).

1 CIRLOT, Lourdes. La obra escultórica de Tàpies. En “Tàpies en Zabalaga”, p. 17