Eduardo Chillida’s sculpture Elogio del hierro III, a key piece in the BBVA Collection, can now be seen in Chillida Plaza, the public square on the south facade of the Museum of Fine Arts of Bilbao. The work will be on deposit thanks to an agreement between the collection and the museum. This placement will heighten the sculpture’s public dimension while at once recalling its original intention by returning it to Bilbao.

An artist highly appreciated the world over, Chillida is an absolutely essential figure in Basque abstraction. His work resonates with the non-figurative art movements that initially arose during the first half of the twentieth century, advocating the creation of a new art rooted in the creative and conceptual concerns of the society of the time.

The monumental sculpture Elogio del hierro III, one of the undisputed masterpieces of the BBVA Collection, is the perfect embodiment of the power and harmony that characterize Chillida’s personal language. Its significance within the BBVA Collection is secured not only by its importance within the artist’s career, but also because Banco de Vizcaya commissioned it directly to Eduardo Chillida in 1991 for the bank’s headquarters in Gran Vía in Bilbao. Due to reasons of conservation, in 2018 it was moved to the Chillida Leku Museum, where it remained until 2025. Thanks to this loan, the work is now returning to the city for which it was created, endorsing Chillida’s vision of art as a meeting place.