El Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid The Martín Chirino exhibition has opened. Memory ofel CírculoCurated by Fernando Castro, the exhibition, organized with the Community of Madrid and in collaboration with the Martín Chirino Art and Thought Foundation, is part of a double celebration: the centenary of the birth of Martín Chirino (1925–2019), one of the most influential Spanish sculptors, and the centenary of the building that houses the current headquarters of the Foundation.el Círculo de Bellas Artes (1926–2026), a space to which the artist was deeply linked.

The story ofel Círculo It is closely linked to Chirino, who presided over the institution between 1983 and 1992. Together with a new Board of Directors and a group of artists and intellectuals, the sculptor spearheaded a process of refounding that transformed el Círculo in the open and multidisciplinary cultural institution that

We know it today: private, non-profit, and declared to be of public interest. Its mandate placed the Círculo as a true beacon of modernity and thought, attentive to the most innovative and experimental artistic currents.

In 2013, el Círculo He organized the exhibition Martín Chirino. Works for a collection, curated by the sculptor himself and composed of fifteen sculptures that are now part of the collection of the Martín Chirino Foundation.

Memory ofel Círculo Today, twelve years later, the exhibition brings together a selection of sculptures and works on paper that explore some of the major themes in his career: wind, the spiral, the circle, the root, and the forging of iron as a poetic language. From historical pieces like Wind 22 (1963–64) to more recent creations such as Alfaguara 6. Table (2000), the exhibition traces a temporal arc that reveals both the coherence of his formal research and the capacity of his work to continue engaging with the present.

The spiral—a symbol of origin, energy, and movement—articulates much of the work. With it, Chirino transforms the heavy into the light, the rigid into the organic, opening spatial folds that seem to trace in the air a constant search for origin and hope. At the same time, the works on paper reveal the artist's most intimate and experimental side, where drawing, writing, and gesture become plastic thought.

Martín Chirino, awarded the Medalla de Oro del Círculo In 2001, he was undoubtedly one of the most important Spanish sculptors, with an extraordinary international presence. His career embraces the legacy of modernism—the forging of iron, geometry, and structural rigor—but projects it toward the future, opening a space of transition between the modern and the contemporary. His works, present in leading collections and museums worldwide, position him as a key figure in the institutionalization of Spanish sculpture and in the development of a language capable of engaging with contemporary sensibilities.

The exhibition not only celebrates a pivotal creator of the second half of the 20th century, but also recalls his institutional legacy. Chirino understood art as an inseparable part of civic and cultural life, and Círculo as a meeting place between disciplines, ideas, and generations. One hundred years after his birth and on the eve of the building's centenary, Martín Chirino. Memoir del Círculo It is a unique opportunity to recognize that dual memory —that of the artist and that of the institution— and project them into the future, in a time that continues to need places of encounter, critical thinking and free creation.

“The steps of Martín Chirino, his beautiful works—writes Fernando Castro in the book accompanying the exhibition—continue to guide us, especially in these dark times when it seems we don’t know where we’re going (unless we wish to complete the catastrophe)… Martín Chirino offers (once again in el Círculo) a spiral journey that seeks the center and, above all, reminds us that art is a promise of happiness.”

Parallel activities

Around the exhibition, el Círculo has organized a series of parallel activities, thanks to which the knowledge of the work of Martín Chirino will be deepened.

In addition to delivering the opening lecture on October 9 at 6:00 p.m., Fernando Castro, curator of the exhibition, will participate in the talk entitled “The Afrocan and the Ethics of the Spiral,” alongside Pedro Alberto Cruz, on October 29. For Martín Chirino, the “Afrocan” represents the most explicit embodiment of the dual roots of the Canary Islands: their aboriginal past and their African heritage. His redefinition of the concept of “mask” in this series cannot be understood without considering the motif of the spiral.

On November 22nd, Antonio Mampaso will join Fernando Castro for the talk “Spirals and the Origin of Beauty.” Chirino's spirals conceal something profound that connects us to both the nearby universe—our Solar System—and the more distant one, the galaxies, but they are also related to complex physical systems. The most interesting and evolved structures our universe has created, from planetary nebulae to living beings, are also complex systems. This conversation will show that astrophysical structures offer clues about the nature of beauty and whether there is a truly universal beauty.

Fernando Castro Flórez (Plasencia, 1964) is a tenured professor of Aesthetics at the Autonomous University of Madrid. He is an art critic for ABC Cultural and a member of the Advisory Committee of the Reina Sofía National Art Museum (MNCARS). He has curated exhibitions of artists such as Miró, Picasso, Dalí, Cragg, David Nash, Nacho Criado, Warhol, Francis Bacon, Imi Knoebel, Julian Opie, Fernando Sinaga, Anselm Kiefer, and Bernardí Roig. He is the author of numerous books, including *In Praise of Laziness: Notes for an Aesthetics of Weariness* (1992), *The Intimate Text: Kafka, Rilke, Pessoa* (1993), *Against Biennialism* (2012), *Shit and Catastrophe: Cultural Syndromes of Contemporary Art* (2014), *Aesthetics at the Stroke of a Like* (2016), *Aesthetics of Cruelty* (2019), *Twitter Philosophy and Columnist Aesthetics* (2019), and *Care and Danger of the Self* (2021).