Despite their small format, Eduardo Chillida's compact, earthen “Lurra” works emanate an incredible power and archaic effect. They are named after the Basque word for earth, which does justice to their primitive character in a fantastic way. Although some of them weigh a considerable amount and appear relatively static at first glance due to their cuboid shape, the artist nonetheless produced a fascinating interplay of different forces through various modifications. He expanded the clay cube with additional elements in a small subgroup to which the present 1984 work also belongs. Three rolls of clay wind over the upper edge of a massive cube, intertwined with one another; they appear soft and flexible in contrast to the rigid block. In the exhibition catalog of Galerie Maeght, where the work was exhibited just one year after its creation, Peter Frey discusses this type of “Lurras” and wrote: “They are intertwined like the arms of an octopus. Will they ever unfold? Will the autonomy of the fireclay allow the blocks to grow tentacles to capture the outer space?” (Peter Frey, Eduardo Chillida, in: exhib. cat. Chillida, Galerie Maeght Lelong, Zurich 1985, p. 14).

Born in San Sebastián in 1924, the artist rose to early international fame with his expansive iron sculptures. However, with more than 500 works, his small-format clay sculptures, most of which are in private hands and rarely make it onto the German auction market, represent an essential part of his oeuvre. When Eduardo Chillida first came into contact with clay as a young man, he did not yet have much use for the smooth and soft material. It was not before the 1970s that he came across the harder and fireproof fireclay in the studio of the Fondation Maeght in southern France that he suddenly found an entirely new approach to the formerly so unwelcome clay. He soon created his first clay sculptures with the German ceramist Hans Spinner. In 1984, he returned to France for a while and completed a larger group of works, including “Lurra G-49”. To this day, the versatile work of the artist, who died in 2002, has received numerous awards. In the year our “Lurra” work was created, he received, among other honors, the Prix National des Beaux-Arts in France, and a year later, he was awarded the Kaiserring of the city of Goslar. [AR]