Crossing the road on my daily walk this morning, I noticed that the asphalt had been repaired in a surprisingly playful way and on such a scale that it could not be a coincidence.
© www.picassomio.com/eduardo-chillida/64821.html
Chillida has even designed a poster for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich:
As I continued my walk even the shadows of the trees on the road were speaking a similar language.
And now I have found that iron has been playing a steady role in Chillida’s work.
He set up his own smithy, worked in a foundry to cast his sculptures himself instead of having them cast like so many other artists do, and he experienced with different patinas to give (some of) his sculptures a rusted look. Wherever I go these days I seem never to stray very far from my own iron!
In a 1995 interview in Beaux-Arts Magazine he remarks ‘il faut laisser la matière s’exprimer’, one should give the material the room to express itself.
I found something related to this in my work notes for my book Living Iron about the ancient belief that minerals need time to grow in the earth.
A form requires space and time to take shape. So do our thoughts. So does a book.
