Chillida’s success is owing to the material wealth of his practice, his breadth of vision and his constant innovativeness, which took him on an endless quest in search of new aesthetic lines yet without ever losing internal coherence. This wealth is largely owing to his fearlessness in taking on new challenges with different materials, ranging from plaster, alabaster, iron, steel, stone, concrete, wood, marble, terracotta, paper.... Chillida never looked on materials as a mere support but instead as active agents with which to strike up a dialogue and, in turn, to jointly generate surprising new works, highly distinct to those created on other supports.

This exhibition focuses on Chillida’s work on paper and, more specifically, the gravitations which the artist started working on in 1985. Reminiscent of collage, yet without the use of any kind of adhesive, they consist in superimposed layers of paper, previously worked by the artist with cuttings, ink or indeed without any intervention, sewn together with string along one edge, from which they hang (gravitating) while the other end is left loose to create a volumetric sculpture-like effect.

In Chillida’s own words: “It came about unexpectedly, one day as I was working as usual. I never liked using glue. Sticking paper together never stuck me as the ideal solution, but it had never occurred to me before that there were many other options. I suddenly thought: “instead of sticking these two pieces of paper with glue, why don’t I join them some other way, sewing them with string or whatever?” I started to think about it and, of course, almost immediately to carry out tests. What’s more, I realized the consequences. The place where the glue used to be before was now occupied by empty space. How could you even compare glue with space! It was crazy. What you stood to gain was incredible”.