21 Facts About Eduardo Chillida

Eduardo Chillida Juantegui, or Eduardo Txillida Juantegi in Basque, was a Spanish Basque sculptor notable for his monumental abstract works.

Eduardo Chillida grew up near hotel Biarritz, which was owned by his grandparents.

Eduardo Chillida had been the goalkeeper for Real Sociedad, San Sebastian's La Liga football team, where his knee was so seriously injured that he had five surgeries, ending a promising football career.

Eduardo Chillida then studied architecture at the University of Madrid from 1943 to 1946.

Eduardo Chillida never finished his degree and instead began to take private art lessons.

Eduardo Chillida lived in Paris from 1948 to 50 and at Villaines-sous-Bois from 1950 to 1955.

In 1950 Eduardo Chillida married Pilar Belzunce and later returned to the San Sebastian area, first to the nearby village of Hernani and in 1959 to the city of his birth, where he remained.

Eduardo Chillida died at his home near San Sebastian at the age of 78.

Eduardo Chillida's sculptures concentrated on the human form ; his later works tended to be more massive and more abstract, and included many monumental public works.

Eduardo Chillida himself tended to reject the label of "abstract", preferring instead to call himself a "realist sculptor".

From 1954 until 1966, Eduardo Chillida worked on a series entitled Anvil of Dreams, in which he used wood for the first time as a base from which the metal forms rise up in explosive rhythmic curves.

Rather than turn over a maquette of a sculpture to fabricators, as many modern artists do, Eduardo Chillida worked closely with the men in the foundry.

Much of Eduardo Chillida's work is inspired by his Basque upbringing, and many of his sculptures' titles are in the Basque language Euskera.

Eduardo Chillida's cast iron sculpture Topos V has been displayed in Placa del Rei, Barcelona, since 1986.

Eduardo Chillida conceived a distinguished oeuvre of etchings, lithographs and woodcuts since 1959, including illustrations for Jorge Guillen's Mas Alla and various other books.

About 64,000 cubic metres of rock will be taken away from the mountain, which rises out of an arid landscape in the north of the island, to create what Eduardo Chillida called his 'monument to tolerance'.

Eduardo Chillida exhibited his early work in 1949 in the Salon de Mai at the Musee d'Art Moderne in Paris, and the next year took part in "Les Mains Eblouies", a show of postwar art at the Galerie Maeght.

Eduardo Chillida participated in many international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale ; the Pittsburgh International, where he received the Carnegie Prize for sculpture in 1964 and, in 1978, shared the Andrew W Mellon Prize with Willem de Kooning; and Documenta II, IV and VI.

Major public works by Eduardo Chillida are in Barcelona, Berlin, Paris, Frankfurt and Dallas.

In Washington, a Eduardo Chillida sculpture is inside the World Bank headquarters.

Eduardo Chillida's sculptures have been collected by major museums, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Tate Britain in London; the Kunsthalle Basel in Switzerland; and the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin.