Egitura

Egitura (1972) belongs to Eduardo Chillida’s substantial graphic output, developed in parallel with his sculpture across five decades. The title, Basque for “structure”, indicates the concern that governs the image: the construction of space through the relation between mass and interval.

The composition is dominated by a dense black field, printed with visible grain, from which a continuous white line emerges — folding, turning at right angles, doubling back on itself. The line does not describe a figure. It cuts space, in the same way Chillida’s iron and steel works cut the air around them.

Line as Void

In Chillida’s language the white line is not a mark added to the surface but an absence opened within it. This inversion is characteristic: the artist consistently treated emptiness as an active material rather than a residue.

The angular, hinged movement of the line recalls the forms of the Peine del viento and the alabaster works of the same decade, where mass is hollowed and folded to admit space into the interior of the block.

Basque Roots

Chillida drew persistently on the Basque language for his titles, and on the forms of Basque vernacular architecture, ironwork and stone for his vocabulary. Egitura names a principle rather than an object, in keeping with a body of work that resisted representation throughout.

The etching was published by Maeght Éditeur, Paris, and printed by Arte, Paris — the workshop and publisher with whom Chillida maintained a long collaboration.

Provenance & Documentation

Signed in pencil lower right, with the artist’s signet, and numbered lower left.

Provenance: Private Collection, Switzerland Literature: Martin van der Koelen (ed.), Eduardo Chillida. Catalogue Raisonné of the Original Prints, Munich: Chorus-Verlag, 1996, no. 12025. Reference: CHL-GRO-01