Some of Eduardo Chillida’s best-known public works (the Wind Comb for example) are made of this material. Corten steel was one of the Basque sculptor’s favourite materials from the 1970s onwards.

In the 1950s, Chillida’s encounter with iron was decisive when it came to developing a language of his own that earned him international recognition. He soon became interested in sharing his work with a larger number of people, which led him to produce public works on a larger scale, and to do this, he had to experiment with other materials.

Corten steel, due to its characteristics, is a material that is highly suitable for public works, which are usually placed in the open air and have monumental sizes.  El artist said, “I work on steel almost like I worked on iron; it’s just on another scale”. Just as he did with iron, he worked on the steel at the forge, heating up the material until it was red-hot and making cuts and twisting it. Many of the pieces were produced at Patricio Etxeberria’s industrial forges in Legazpia or at the Steel Forge in Reinosa. To implement his projects he turned to a team of workers and operatives who he supervised in carrying out the work. This was rarely based on previous models, as he preferred to interact with the material and observe how it reacted at each stage.

Although we are talking here about Corten steel, in actual fact Eduardo Chillida used various types of steel: Aloña steel came from waste objects that he found in his studio; other types such as Reco steel or Reco-Chrome-Nickel, had a similar composition to Corten steel. These are steels that due to their copper content are highly resistant to damp. The pieces made of this material produce a layer of oxide on the outside that prevents corrosion towards the inside.

This outer layer of oxide provides his sculptures with a characteristic colour. This depends on the conditions that it is exposed to or on how old the piece is. The more extreme these conditions are or the older the piece is, they tend to acquire a colour that is more like chocolate, while the more recent ones are orange-coloured. It is a living ever-changing material.

Chillida-Leku, before it became a museum open to the public, was the place where the sculptures “rested” before being sent to the place that they had been made for. Eduardo Chillida felt that he had finished them when this initial orangey layer had fallen off. Some of them, like Buscando la Luz I, (Searching for light 1) produced for the German city of Munich, ended up staying in the museum as they harmonised with their surroundings in a special way.