Paisajes y naturaleza

Chillida Leku

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“One day I dreamed of a utopia: to find a space where my sculptures could rest while people walked among them as they would through a forest”. This was how Donostia sculptor Eduardo Chillida laid the foundations of Chillida Leku.

Located in Hernani, only minutes from San Sebastián city centre, the museum opens up before us as a space of peace and leisure at any time of year. The work of grand master Chillida is distributed over 11 hectares with more than 40 sculptures at strate-gic locations. The dialogue sought by the artist for his creations, among themselves and with nature, is total, making the visitor an accomplice in this journey through all the senses.

A long stroll takes us through the park, where we can pause at his sculptures to touch them and feel the different textures of the materials. We can even go right into some of them.

At the centre of it all we find the Zabalaga farmstead, which Eduardo Chillida refur-bished to maintain its traditional identity. Its walls bear witness to his delicate reform work to create a large inner space. Here we can now examine itinerant exhibitions alongside works by the artist on its two levels.

But his relationship with the territory does not begin or end at this museum, for the mark of Eduardo Chillida is all around Gipuzkoa. From the sculptures we find in San Sebastián, where the Wind Comb is a must-see, to Chillida Lantoki in Legazpi’s Valle del Hierro or “Iron Valley”, the workshop where he shaped some of the creations we are now familiar with as a universal sculptural benchmark. Thanks to Chillida Leku and his creations dotted all over our territory, it is as if the artist’s work is never-ending.