Eduardo Chillida is one of the main exponents of Basque abstraction. His works can be framed within the non-figurative movements that arose during the second half of the twentieth century which championed a new art acknowledging the creative and conceptual concerns of contemporary society. From the late-forties, after creating his earlier sculptures in plaster influenced by classical statuary, his research focused on the interrelationship of matter, volume, space and void. In exploring these postulates, he incorporated iron, wood and alabaster into his practice, using them to create abstract works that transcend the material to engage with the world of the intangible.

His works on paper deserve particular attention within his overall output. The earliest examples are ethereal and linear drawings in line with a figurative language tending towards simplification. With the passing of time his style would become completely abstract and gestural, evincing Chillida’s interest in oriental graphics and calligraphy. An elegant contrast between the light background and the black marks subtly and freely taking over the surface were already visible in those pieces, something the artist described as follows: “With a line the world is joined together, with a line the world is divided; drawing is beautiful and is terrible.” His experimentation on paper continued apace, and in the late-fifties, Chillida took up engraving. In his early prints, the covered the paper and in the late-sixties he began to add aquatints, with dense areas reminding us of his three-dimensional work.

For Chillida both engraving and sculpture were a means of studying light, contrasts between dark and light, the empty and the full. The poetics of contraries was a constant throughout his practice. However, in spite of that confrontation of elements and the apparent roughness of the materials used, the artist’s compositions convey a sense of serenity, something that would probably derive from Zen in der Kunst des Bogenschiessens (Zen in the Art of Archery), a book by Eugen Herrigel which was recommended to him by Georges Braque (1882-1963). This treatise on Zen spiritualism advocates a quest for a state of balance between opposing forces in order to reach Oneness, a reflection clearly evoked in Aundi II. This work belongs to the series of three large-format prints Aundi (Large), published in 1970 by Maeght Éditeur in Paris. In it Chillida achieves a superb translation of his sculptural language to a two-dimensional support, endowing it with a delicate materiality that contrasts with the forcefulness of the engraving. Through and the artist succeeded in creating a superimposition of constructive forms dominated by spatial modulation and a perfect balance of all the elements.