Chillida initially began studying architecture in Madrid, but soon became attracted to the visual arts and began to attend workshops at the Círculo de Bellas Artes.

In the late 1940s, seeking a better environment in which to work, he moved to Paris, where he struck up a friendship with Pablo Palazuelo. He also took an interest in the German Romantics and began to exhibit his work publicly. His first works were figurative sculptures, although they already displayed a simplification of form. He took references for his torsos from both the distant past and the present (a recurring feature of the Basque artist's work), drawing on the ancient Greek sculptures in the Louvre, but also on the work of Henry Moore. Metamorfosis [Metamorphosis] (1949) was probably his first abstract piece. In the early 1950s he returned to Spain and went to work in a forge. It awakened an interest in iron, which was to become his signature material form then on, as exemplified by Ilarik [funerary stele], a monolithic piece which generates tensions in the iron, turned in on itself, to create dialogues with the surrounding space. At the same time, the piece also denotes the place; Chillida once said that he made his sculptures speak in Basque, bringing cultural connotations to the specific space. From this point on, he continued to develop the elements that he had discovered: matter, emptiness, space, place. It was also during this period, that he made the doors for the Arantzazu Basilica.

At the end of the 1950s, he began experimenting with other materials such as wood and steel, as well as producing graphic work. He travelled to the Mediterranean in the early 1960s where he was influenced by the light. Subsequently, he also began working with alabaster, exploring the possibilities of this material to let the light through and boring holes in it for this purpose. In the early 1970s he did the same with concrete, which he used with iron to create large monumental pieces in the public space, often in dialogue with the natural surroundings. Examples include Meeting Point III (Madrid, 1971), Wind Comb (Donostia/ San Sebastián, 1977), Our Father's House (Gernika-Lumo, 1988) and, most importantly, Praise of the Horizon (Gijón, 1990).

Among many other accolades, Chillida won the International Sculpture Gran Prix at the Venice Biennale (1958); the Kandinsky Prize (1960); the Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh) Award ex aequo (1964); the Rembrandt Award (1975); the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts (1981); the Prince of Asturias Award (1987); the Imperial Order of Japan in 1991; an honorary doctorate from the University of Alicante/Alacant (1996). Throughout his life, his work was exhibited at some of the world's leading art centres and museums. In 2000, the Chillida-Leku Museum — a specific space dedicated to his work — was opened outside Donostia/San Sebastián.

Isabel Tejeda