El viento (The Wind) is a seminal piece in the production of this artist, who refers to himself as “a sculptor of wind.”

Martín Chirino’s relationship with metal comes from his youth and is explained by the fact that the artist worked for a couple of years alongside his father, who was the head of a workshop in a shipyard. During this time, Martín learned how to cast and forge metal and began to experiment with clay and wood.

A sojourn in London afforded him a chance to get to know the work of Henry Moore (1898-1986) and Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975). In 1958 he joined the El Paso group, and at the end of that decade he became fascinated with the idea of representing the wind.

As from that moment onwards, his work revolved around the spiral, which he uses to symbolise wind. The image harks back to his childhood and youth in the Las Canteras beach, where the African wind endlessly creates whirling spirals of sand. But this same symbol is also recurrent in the basal stones by the Canarian aborigines he discovered on his visits to the Museo de Las Palmas.

Both wind and spiral connect him to his land of birth, where wind is a crucial element whose strength and direction determine the activity of fishing, one of the backbones of the islands’ economy.

Sculpture emerges naturally from Chirino’s hands. Not all spirals behave the same: some twist in on themselves while others open up, yet others become tense, curved or widen.

In this work from 1972, the spiral is left open without fully closing in on itself, and expands as it develops towards the back. The artist created five copies of this piece, four of which belong to the BBVA Collection.