16|AULA cd Eduardo Chillida. 3 What is a dialogue for Chillida? As a start, we can say that upon looking at Chillida’s prints, clippings and sculptures, we can notice the integrity of each work that results from the cohesive effect of the limits that defines each part. Limit gets the leading role through different resources. It obtains it by the specific shape that defines each part and through light. As an example, we will take the works Alditaku II and Estudio para Peine del Viento. Chillida’s figures look like fingers squeezing air, or hands clutching each other 4. This quest for figures that possess an apparent desire to hold, fit and clutch, conditions a quality that holds the work together. This can be corroborated by the grade of difficulty differentiating background from figure. In many cases, it is hard to tell apart the artwork from the supporting structure. In his prints, light plays a part by generating contrast between paper and ink. In his collages, light can be seen in the relief created by the layers of paper that he cuts and superimposes. His sculptures are a different matter altogether. Light does not impact a painted plane or a superimposition of layers on a plane. The tridimensionality of the sculpted space elicits an understanding of the depth of matter and void and at the same time shines light on the limits at different angles generating different reflections. That dynamism gives it an image of slow motion. In sculpture, the dialogue between matter and void is intensified and once more, light takes over the spotlight in the perception of limits. When we are present in the space of Santa Maria del Mar we can feel the meaning of the words voiced by Chillida in his opening discourse for the “Real Academia de las Bellas Artes de San Fernando” (Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando). They are personified here in the series of columns and vaults on one side, and on the other side, the void that runs between the first and under the latter. You can even feel a certain tension between them. The way in which the luminaries diffuse the light, especially from the shaft of the columns to the nerves and concave planes of the vaults, compels us to perceive this tension as the suspended moment of an action in a slow process. Detaching ourselves from the dominion of gravity over everything on earth, we could be compelled to ask ourselves if it is the void pushing the stone of the vaults, giving the cavities of the church their form of niches, naves, transept, apse and ambulatory; or matter separating itself from these cavities in order to tame the void. Just as Chillida assumes, it truly is the perception of limit what unveils the existence of dialogue but without light we would never notice limits, or understand space. The artist, through his work, steers us to pay attention to this process, and through it and the supremacy of light, we can see the phenomena of the Church from a different perspective.