From Within (Desde dentro), March 1953. Iron, 38 3/4 x 11 x 15 3/4 inches (98.4 x 27.9 x 40 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York  58.1504. © 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VEGAP, Madrid. Photo © SRGF

Eduardo Chillida began his career studying architecture; his oeuvre displays an underlying sense of structural organization and discipline in materials, planning of spatial relationships, and scaling of elements. A pride in craftsmanship, especially in the wrought iron work of the blacksmith, is a part of the artist’s Basque heritage. From the early 1950s, his sculpture revealed the importance of the material, as seen in From Within (Desde dentro, March 1953), which exudes a vitality and tension in the bending and joining of iron elements. The curved and pointed shapes of iron bars create a silhouette that changes when seen from different angles. Skeletal forms are aligned in an open spatial organization around a central core, thus the demarcation of space is based on an essentially linear structure.