The Concave Curve originated in a personal experience that the co-director of the gallery, Adolfo Cayón, had as an Art History student at the Complutense University of Madrid. In 1993, he attended a conference given by Eduardo Chillida at the Reina Sofia Museum, which effected a profound revelation in him. At that event, the artist chatted with Jacques Dupin about their common friend, Joan Miró, and spoke of the importance that the concave line had for both of them. A decade earlier, as he was preparing his tribute to Miró, who died in 1983, Chillida had made a fundamental discovery: while the convex curve—that is, the exterior of the curve—dominated Miró’s work, it was the concave curve that most characterized his own; in other words, the interior space, the space that yet remained.
Chillida’s discovery of the importance of the inner space generated by the concave curve is at the heart of this current exhibit. Its purpose is to bring to the fore what so often goes unnoticed: the nature of space, a space that reveals itself and acquires its own identity by way of the inner tension created by the material.
Among the works gathered for this project is “Tres I” (“Three I”), presented in the X Triennial Exhibit in Milan and shown only once in Spain to date. It was displayed in 1954 at the Clan Gallery (Galería Clan) in Madrid as part of Chillida’s first solo exposition in this country. In addition to this work, the present exhibit will include, not only an important selection of fourteen sculptures, but also thirteen drawings and gravitations, three-dimensional reliefs on paper. In these, Chillida arrives at a new technique that endows the works with a drifting effect, through the substitution of a physical element, such as the adhesive or glue, with emptiness.
This remarkable exhibit will inaugurate a new space for the Galeria Cayón in Madrid, one with its own unique environment. Built in the 1930s as a small theater for the convent adjacent to the Blanca de Navarra 7 gallery, this space has been reconfigured by E-MS Arquitectos Studio under the direction of Susana Martinez and Enrique Montejo.
Indeed, this new site offers more than mere space. For Adolfo Cayón, its perfect dimensions (12 by 6 meters, and 12 meters in height) were an immediate reminder of the interior of the Tindaya project. Encouraged by this concurrence, he approached the Chillida estate with a proposal for this exhibit, which would gather works from important private collections in Spain and in Europe, as well as the Chillida Belzunce Family and the Chillida Museum.
Please, see below a video of the exhibition and conference at the gallery by Francisco Calvo Serraller:
