Projecting out into the Atlantic Ocean like huge tendrils trying to escape from the rocks, but frozen in time, as the stormy winds blow and the heaving waves crash and wash over them, Eduardo Chillida’s “Haizeen orrazia” (The Comb of the Winds) in San Sebastián, creates shapes in space from rusting corten steel that reinforces the relationship between the Basque people and the sea in a material representative of the shipbuilding industry.  

Chillida (1924 – 2002) experimented with his “Peine del viento” (Wind Combs) from 1952 to 1999, creating over 23 sculptures, one of which (No XIX from 1998) is now on show alongside the steel work “Elogio del vacio VI” from 2000 and the granite sculpture “Lo profundo es el aire XVIII” (also from 1998) at the Ordovas Gallery in London.  Chillida’s work shows a dexterity that was perhaps is influenced by his early career in football and an understanding of space and materials from his studies in architecture as he created fluid movement and space from solid corten steel with shapes that twist, turn and intertwine, suggesting something which is much lighter and pliable, pushing the material to its limits as it tries to escape from the artificial constraints of the gallery, as if searching to be in a large natural landscape such as the cliffs of San Sebastián.