Eduardo Chillida

This work was produced in response to the oldest surviving piece of ancient Greek drama: The Persians by Aeschylus. In this tragedy, Xerxes provokes the wrath of the gods for his hubristic expedition against Greece in 480/79 BC; the focus of the drama is the defeat of Xerxes' navy at Salamis. Aeschylus himself had fought there, only eight years before the play was performed.

As a young artist in 1940's Paris, Chillida had been impressed by the Classical statues on display in the Louvre, embracing their influence in his work. Soon, however, he banished the ancient world from his work, even going so far as to prohibit himself from contemplating such work for over a decade, so that he would cleanse his mind of their effects. He declared that he belonged to the "dark light of the Atlantic coast" rather than "the white light of the Mediterranean".

By the time he returned to this ancient text, his work had long-since embraced the industrial materials and abstract forms that define his mature career. The universal themes of time, space and physical form - expressed so beautifully in Classical art - still drove his own work, but these sensibilities were now filtered through a profound connection to his native Basque country. The woodcuts Chillida produced for this portfolio are a fascinating amalgamation of two distinct worlds.

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