Chirino and ductile iron

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Avilés,

This year a century of birth is celebrated in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria by Martín Chirino, whom we will always identify for its spirals but, beyond them, was heir to the Spanish sculptural avant -garde of the first half of the twentieth century in the second, continuing the wake of Julio González and Pablo Gargallo and deploying in his pieces a deep interest in Guanche culture. It became one of the fundamental figures of the renewal of plastic languages during the postwar period, with their participation in the El Paso group, of which he would be a founding member as soon as in 1957; This group would mean the emergence of an art rooted in the Spanish tradition, and in turn criticized with the social political situation, and supposed the internationalization of the authors to him linked and their works.

Chirino’s work is based on two principles: wrought iron, the majority material of his sculptures; and the aforementioned spiral, symbol and constant formal solution throughout its trajectory. It synthesizes that reason the foundations of its creation: the notion of folding and deployed, the horizontal and vertical development in the space and in the curvature of a material that, in its hands, and recovering the tradition of the forge, becomes ductile.

The Chirino production set extends and brings chronologically according to concrete reasons, whose referent is always in nature and the real world and which insists again and again, until trying to exhaust their expressive possibilities.

The Martín Chirino Art and Thought Foundation commemorates that ephemeris with a dozen exhibition projects and activities throughout this year, which coincides with the celebration of the first decade of operation of this institution. We can currently visit three of those samples: two in Las Palmas, open until August 31 (in the Atlantic Center for Modern Art. Caam and El Castillo de la Luz) and one in Asturias (at the Niemeyer Center in Aviles, until September 21).

We will begin with the Canary Islands: Caam welcomes “Martín Chirino. Chronicle of the century”, raised by his commissioners, Fernando Castro Flórez and Jesús M. Castaño, as an anthology (it must be remembered that Chirino himself was founder and director of this museum, between 1989 and 2002). This is the project that vertebra the centenary: it has seventy -five pieces of different formats, from prototypes to large works, with part of its bibliographic and documentary archive and with less known non -sculptural works: drawings, sketches and collages.

The chronological tour is structured in series, well studied in a recent reasoned catalog, arrivals of twenty -five Spanish collections: Black queens, informalist compositions, winds, ladies, inquisitors, penetreins, heads. Chronicle of the twentieth century, Alfaguaras, Aphrocanes, Eyevices, Roots and Landscapes. They are examined, together with their most widespread proposals, those that he made in bronze and for public spaces, and especially his spirals; For Castro Flórez, They break the dichotomies, at the same time evoking the air and the aquatic element, the feeling of loneliness and the desire to strengthen common links, the obsession with the Canarian identity and the most lucid of cosmopolitis. Through his works we penetrate the radical experience of modernity, we contemplate an impressive spatial projection, with folds and replicues of a beautiful modulation that makes the heavy light.

Indeed, they offer high expressiveness with reduced matter and are linked, at a time, to the primitive art, to the beach and the geometry of modernity. A didactic character has also been granted to the exhibition, through photographs, audiovisuals and Chirino phrases alluding to its creation.

Martín Chirino. Chronicle of the century. Caam Las Palmas

As for the Castillo de la Luz, the oldest defensive strength in Gran Canaria, houses the collective “The Paso, Vanguardia and Commitment”, curated by Jesús M. Castaño and dedicated to the group that Chirino contributed to founding in the fifties and that aimed, according to his manifesto, invigorate the Spanish contemporary art, in which they detected lack of constructive criticism, of exhibition rooms, exposure rooms, marching and guidance (informative) to the public.

It remained active only three years, but was surely the most representative artistic group of the second half of the century in Spain, linked to informalism and the Another art. Juan Eduardo Cirot, in a letter dated in 1958, wrote to thousands that informalism is not a sect, but a way that presupposes affinities, in reference to the intrinsic characteristics of El Paso: an attachment to the Hispanic tradition and some critical patriotism, initially, not necessarily opposed to franchise.

The creations of the artists linked to El Paso were destined to show that, through a collective effort, the sleepy plastic of that time could be renewed. The group, in the expression of Antonio Saura, was a common acceptance of informalism, that is, of the austere palette, white and black, the empire of shapes on color, expressive gesture and, in Spain, the “Hispanic” tone, by Cariz Tragic. It would be, for the authors of the subsequent decades, an unavoidable reference, regardless of their inclination for those approaches.

Finally, at the Niemeyer center, “Dear Martin! (Martín Chirino in the United States)”, a compendium of sculptures, drawings and documentary material that refer to the artist’s relationship with the United States. These ties began in 1960 and would materialize in a dozen individual and very numerous collective exhibitions in New York.

This exhibition, by Alfonso de la Torre, recalls how, in 1960, Frank O’Hara cocurated for the MoMa “New Spanish Painting and Sculpture”, which included Chirino’s work. The Canary then began to travel to the United States, fulfilling a traveling tradition that he understood as a vital mandate, since since childhood he accompanied his father in his marine transits. He also admired Brancusi, who toured on his Europe until he reached Paris.

As for the Centennial activities, the next ones will take place in the Castillo de la Luz. The director of the Art and Thought Foundation Martín Chirino, Jesús M. Castaño, will offer guided tours of the exhibition “El Paso. Vanguardia and Commitment”, until July 23, and on the 2nd of this month a conference on the importance of that group.