Chillida Gets His Chance on Madison Avenue

Eduardo Chillida’s market has been on a multi-year roll in Europe. Now Pilar Ordovas is bringing a show of the sculptor’s work to Madison Ave. for a several weeks this Autumn at her pop-up gallery on Madison Avenue and 51st St. Kelly Crow has a story in the Wall Street Journal about it:

On Oct. 30, Ms. Ordovas will open a pop-up show, “Chillida: Rhythm-Time-Silence,” in a 10,000 square-foot former retail space on Madison Avenue in New York that will include rarely seen examples lent by the artist’s estate—including one treelike form, 2000’s “Advice to Space VIII,” that weighs 21 tons and took almost a month to ship from Spain. Other works like 1999’s “Wind Comb XIX,” evoke his La Concha Bay trio yet sit on the ground, its three rust-colored steel arms poised to grasp yet never touching.

Some of those pieces are now in Ms. Ordovas’s show, making it a key test of Chillida’s market moving forward. […] Chillida’s recent auction performance suggests he’s poised to take off. In the past two years, 11 major works have come up for sale, according to auction database Artnet, and all found buyers, with nine selling for well over their high estimates. Qatar’s royal family also reset Chillida’s record two years ago, paying Christie’s $6.3 million for his totemlike steel piece, “Looking for the Light IV” from 2001.

Ms. Ordovas declined to give specific asking prices for the works in his show but said works have sold privately for as much as $10 million. “We live in a time when artists are very aware of how they’re perceived in the market,” she said. “He reminds me there were artists before who didn’t care about making sales as much as making work.”

Spanish Sculptor Eduardo Chillida Gets a Second Chance (WSJ)