Martin Chirino

Lady Harimaguada (1996) in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

Mediterránea (1972) in the Museo de Escultura al Aire Libre (Madrid)

Martín Chirino López (born March 1, 1925 in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria , † March 11, 2019 in Madrid ) was a Spanish sculptor and founding member of the El Paso group . Chirino worked mainly with iron, and his work can be classified as abstract art. His sculptures are characterized on the one hand by the lack of narrative components of expressiveness, on the other hand by their formal and symbolic richness.

life and work

Chirino was the eleventh child of twelve siblings. His father worked in a shipyard. From 1948 Chirino studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando ( Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando ) because he had received a scholarship from the Ministry of Popular Education. Chirino had previously worked with his father at the shipyard, where he learned the forging and foundry techniques. At the same time he began to work with wood as an autodidact.

In 1952 he traveled to Paris and the following year to Italy . After returning to the Canary Islands , Chirino and his friend Manolo Millares studied the inscriptions of the Canarian indigenous people ( Guanches ). Inspired by this, he started a series called Reinas negras (Black Queens) . In 1956 Chirino moved to London , where he completed his artistic training.

In 1957 he founded the artist group El Paso together with other artists such as Antonio Saura , Pablo Serrano and Luis Feito . Chirino was very interested in African and Aboriginal art . He preferred to use forged iron, for example in his 1960 series El viento (The Wind) . The spiral becomes a symbol of tension, power and movement, a theme that he continued in the 1960s with the works Aerovos (continuous spirals on a horizontal plane) and Afrocán (oval shapes with vertical orientation). His steles from the eighties revive Canarian primitivism and are inspired by the simplicity and limitlessness of Constantin Brâncuși 's sculpture .

From 1972 he lived alternately in the USA and in Spain . His most important series come from this decade: Mediterráneas , Ladies , Paisajes ... Around 1980 he approached constructivism and created his work Penetrecan . In 1980 he received the National Prize for Plastic Art. From 1983 to 1990 he was President of the Foundation of the Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid and from 1989 Director of the Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno de las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

literature

• Xavier Barral i Altet (Eds.) And Javier Arce: The History of Spanish Art . Könemann, Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-895-08700-9 .

Web links

Commons : Martín Chirino  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official website (Spanish / English)