Martín Chirino (1925–2019) pointed out, in “The Plowshare and the Plow”, a text published in the monographic issue that Papeles de Son Armadans dedicated in 1959 to El Paso, that inspiration is tied to humble, necessary tools:

“My sculpture comes closer to tools in their origins. It is akin to the plow or the plowshare. My work could possess what those instruments have of a human extension. They bind humankind to the earth in a harmonious and necessary task. Sculpture too is interwoven with the human spirit in its most radical dimension, that of the implements… They are in consonance with the useful elevated to the rank of symbol. I have sought them in the people.”

Chirino’s sculptural gesture is, following in the footsteps of Julio González, a “drawing in the air”, an expression of strength and sensuality, where spatial continuity carries the gaze beyond strict objecthood. In Chirino’s aesthetic, the spiral form is fundamental—without a doubt—evoking the wind but also alluding to breath and the creative impulse, an embodiment of the power of chaos and its resolution in moments of suspension filled with beauty. Chirino finds in the spiral the trace of origin, resonating with Bachelard’s observation in The Poetics of Space that when one ventures inward, toward the center of the spiral, one often becomes errant and seems to enter into an anomalous “enclosure in the exterior.”

In terms of material imagination, these sculptures break down dichotomies: if they are figures of the aerial, they also recall the dizzying experience of plunging into water or the serenity that arises when contemplating a landscape. Earth, face, mask, dreams, and the closure of the radical experience of modernity—all this spatial projection, as Eduardo Westerdahl said, keeps Chirino’s work in constant tension. These memorable works, folded in a baroque manner, invite the viewer into a poetics of intensity, where lines and the rigidity of metal give way to the most beautiful spatial modulation.

Martín Chirino was, without any doubt, one of the most important Spanish sculptors, with an extraordinary international presence. He held exhibitions in prestigious museums and galleries, and his works are part of reference collections. Alongside his artistic production, he was deeply concerned with the cultural situation, which led him to promote projects such as the revitalization of the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid (1983–1992) and the founding of the Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. In the centenary year of this great artist’s birth, this exhibition keeps alive the memory of a man radically passionate about culture, who described himself as a “stoic”, who forged the spiral and, for many years, breathed new life into the Círculo.