HERNANI.- Chillida Leku has opened Geometric Bodies, an exhibition dedicated to the use of geometric volumes throughout Eduardo Chillida’s artistic career. Bringing together works from different stages of the artist’s production, the exhibition explores how Chillida employed geometric forms as a recurring formal and conceptual resource. From his figurative plaster sculptures of the late 1940s to his later architectural-scale projects characterised by greater formal synthesis and a public dimension, the exhibition reveals how geometric bodies served as a vehicle for investigating space, matter and form. Within this framework, the sphere and the cube emerge as recurring motifs that generate distinct fields of meaning throughout the exhibition.
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Geometric Bodies also inaugurates a new exhibition format at Chillida Leku, incorporating the participation of two invited artists, each represented by a single work. Their contributions are integrated into the exhibition itinerary as counterpoints that open up new readings of Chillida’s practice. On this occasion, the museum has invited Larry Bell, renowned for his explorations of laminated glass and the ways in which light is reflected, transmitted and absorbed, and Nora Aurrekoetxea, whose work investigates sculpture as a relational space between body, object and material.
“Eduardo Chillida belonged to a generation of artists who sought to transform art through sculpture. He was not interested in breaking apart the sculptural object, but rather in redefining its spatial presence,” explains Estela Solana, Exhibitions and Registrar Manager at Chillida Leku.
Through approximately forty works, Geometric Bodies examines how Chillida explored space and pursued a lifelong quest to give form to what cannot be seen through geometric structures and volumes. “The exhibition invites visitors to discover how geometry, far from being a closed or purely formal language, becomes a means of thinking about space, scale, limits and the relationship between matter and void,” adds Mikel Chillida, Director of Chillida Leku.
Throughout the exhibition, the works by Larry Bell and Nora Aurrekoetxea create points of contrast and offer new connections with Chillida’s sculptures. Larry Bell presents TRIOLITH D (2020), a glass sculpture on loan from Hauser & Wirth that transforms the perception of space. Through a structure composed of triangular planes, the work creates a visual experience that shifts as visitors move around it. As is often the case in Bell’s practice, light becomes a material in its own right, transforming the piece and making it appear alive and ever-changing.
The second invited work is aulki bat (2019) by Basque artist Nora Aurrekoetxea, produced during her sculptural research period at the Royal College of Art in London between 2017 and 2019. Part of the collection of the CA2M Museum in Móstoles, the work belongs to a wider body of research developed in collaboration with stylist Milena Diekmann. Through a structure of metal rods interwoven with synthetic hair using macramé techniques, Aurrekoetxea disrupts the object’s original function and proposes a reflection on the relationship between body, object and space through the transformation of an everyday item such as a chair.
“These two works generate a productive tension between the three artistic practices. The ephemeral in contrast to solidity, the relationship between body, space and sculpture, or the reflectivity of glass in dialogue with alabaster all open up particularly compelling fields of interpretation,” says Estela Solana.
The collaboration with Nora Aurrekoetxea will extend beyond the work currently on display. As part of Geometric Bodies, Chillida Leku will co-produce a new work by the artist that will be incorporated into the exhibition over the coming months, further expanding the dialogue established between Aurrekoetxea’s practice and Eduardo Chillida’s work.
From Plaster to Architecture
Geometric Bodies presents an exhibition tracing Eduardo Chillida’s use of geometric volumes across his artistic trajectory, from his figurative plaster sculptures of the late 1940s to his later architectural projects characterised by increasing formal clarity and synthesis.
Within Chillida’s universe, the sphere and the cube take on distinct meanings. The sphere is associated with figurative representation, organic forms, the terrestrial world and the cosmos, while also evoking action, movement, rotation and weightlessness. The cube, by contrast, appears as a symbol of spatial definition and stability, associated with measurement, order, human construction and architecture as an expression of the desire to organise space.
The exhibition follows Eduardo Chillida’s career chronologically, beginning with his early figurative plaster sculptures, where basic geometric forms are already present. In the early 1950s, the introduction of iron marked a decisive turning point in his work. His sculptures became more aerial in character, articulated through curved planes, spheres and bars that both define and expand space. Produced in the darkness of the forge and conceived on a manageable size, these works “embody the techniques and traditions of the Basque Country while simultaneously addressing the cosmos and universal knowledge,” notes Solana.
By the beginning of the 1960s, a new orientation emerged in Chillida’s sculpture. The artist began to concentrate space and define it more precisely, giving it a stronger physical presence. His works gained weight and density, adopting slower and more massive rhythms that would also find expression in his public commissions.
In this regard, Homage to Kandinsky (1965) can be understood as a declaration of intent. The work brings together three concepts that would come to define much of Chillida’s subsequent production: light, architecture and monumentality.
From this point onward, Chillida evolved towards increasingly essential forms. His sculptures assert themselves, dominate space and condense it, revealing the power of defined form through both the solidity of matter and the active presence of emptiness. Some examples of this can be found in the works on display in the exhibition: Study for Homage to Calder (1979), a suspended iron sphere that rotates under its own weight, gradually revealing all of its surfaces through slow movement, and the In Praise of the Horizon series (1985–1989), which perfectly exemplifies the artist’s thinking.
“I have come to wonder whether the horizon might be the homeland of all people, because wherever you move, the whole Earth becomes horizon. If all people living on Earth seek the horizon, then it is the Earth itself—the spherical form of the Earth—that becomes a common horizon for all humankind,” Eduardo Chillida once reflected.
The exhibition remains on view until 26 October 2026 and has been organised with the support of Hauser & Wirth, private lenders and institutions including the CA2M Museum, the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, the Museum of the University of Navarra and Artium Museoa.
