MARTÍN CHIRINO LÓPEZ (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1925- Madrid, 2019)."Atlántica III- The sea", 1988.Wrought iron.Attached certificate issued by the artist.Work reproduced: in the catalogue raisonné of the artist. Nº 295 P.367.- Martín Chirino. Retrospective MNCARS (1991), p.104.- Martín Chirino. Recent sculpture Grace Borgenicht, New York (1988).-Guadalimar, nº 112 Madrid (1991), p.35.-Work exhibited at Grace Borgenicht Gallery. New York (1988).Provenance: Juana Mordó Gallery; Grace Borgenicht, New York.Size: 21 x 204,5 x 32 cm.Through this sculpture Chirino turns the rotundity of wrought iron into a metaphor for the concept of the wave. The work belongs to the Atlántica series, which dealt with concepts of the Mediterranean and the culture of the sea as the guiding thread of a series of sculptures that were conceived without a pedestal, with monumental dimensions. The piece was exhibited at the Grace Borgenicht gallery, which had been very interested in the sculptor's work since his participation in the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1960.Approximately from 1959, shortly after joining "El Paso", Martín Chirino began to produce pieces that elude an enclosed space and gain in dynamism, evoking materialised gestures. It is in this context that we find his first approaches to the theme of the wind, which the sculptor would often address over the next two decades, and which in fact became one of the fundamental themes of his work. Chirino sculpts the wind in a spiral that points to infinity, an element that the artist himself associates with an Atlantic as well as Mediterranean sign, which emulates the nature of the Canary Islands, his place of origin. Thus, Chirino works the spiral due to its inexhaustible character, stating "You don't know where it begins and where it ends" "A broken spiral in itself is a mystery. It has something of a hypothesis and of reality. It happens with it as with dreams, that what remains when you wake up is not what you felt, but its rumour". In his first steps as a sculptor, Chirino took on the forge, the forge, fire, metal, as an extension of his own, a territory from which to investigate a language, that of abstraction, his artistic role marking a before and after. The works are always based on similar elements, although arranged with different nuances. At the beginning, the line formed by the sculpture is more open and clearly violent, while as time progresses it becomes more concentrated. In these works Chirino plays with wrought iron or bronze, materials that give a certain telluric aspect to the pieces, which provides the gravity in the balance established with the immaterial. Also key to his winds is the work of hammering, marked on the piece as scars of a struggle. The sculptor Martín Chirino trained at the Escuela de San Fernando in Madrid and at the School of Fine Arts in London. After a first series of sculptures, "Reinas Negras" (Black Queens), and exhibitions such as the group show at the Museo Canario, Chirino moved to Madrid in 1955, accompanied by his friends Manolo Millares, Elvireta Escobio, Manuel Padrono and Alejandro Reino. He also spent a month in London, where he saw first-hand the Sumerian and Egyptian sculptures in the British Museum. Only a year later, in 1956, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Madrid acquired two of his works. He then held his first solo exhibition at the Ateneo de Madrid, after which he became a member of the recently founded El Paso group. His recognition grew, and only two years later he was given a special room in the Spanish pavilion at the São Paulo Biennial. In 1960 he took part in a group exhibition at the MOMA in New York, where he presented four pieces, one of which already featured the spiral, the most recurrent theme in his work from those years onwards.
