Roman Architecture

General Characteristics
In opposition to the Greek, Roman space is something interior, in which the person can be. Buildings are closed. Beauty and sumptuous are mixed with practical. In addition, architects are engineers and urbanites too. This can be seen in the importance given to cities as the economic and political centre. The function of the urbanism is triple: solve the problems of the development of the cities (water supply, sewer system, transport, squares, defence); the psychological effect of impressing the rest of the world and, finally, to ease the colonization of the territories they dominated.

The solution given by urbanism is rational, quick and clear. They adopted the squared plan, with two axis that cut each other perpendicularly (cardum and decumanus) in which integration appears the foro or place where public buildings are concentrated. Its origin is the military camp and the hypodamic plan designed by the Greeks.

Romans used the semicircular arch and the vault to cover the spaces. This solution did not eliminate the lintel. In some cases they put the lintel over the arch, creating effects of great dynamism. The vault system is varied: rib, barrel, semi-spherical, quarter sphere, and others. It is especially important the use of the dome.

Romans assimilated Greek forms: they adopted the three orders even when in a more ornamental than functional way. Frequently they combined them in a superposition glued to the wall with decorative value. In addition, they created two new orders: the Tuscan that is similar to the Doric but without lines in the shaft, and the composite, that combines Ionic and Corinthian in the capital.

Materials are ashlar with different combinations, brick and mortar or concrete, a poor and cheep material formed by mixing different stones and sand. It was called Opus cementitium. This material allowed them to built colossal and strong constructions that were decorated with paintings, mosaics or by covering them with marble.

Typologies
Religious architecture: the temple. Religiosity was based on a complex mythology in which they combined their own goods with those of the countries they dominated. Besides, they practised a domestic religion, with familiar gods (manes and lares) to which they offered their respect. The model of temple follows the Greek plan with some differences: there is only a portico with columns in the façade where there is the only entrance to the temple. It tends to be pseudo perypteral, this is, columns are linked to the walls around the building. It has the triple Etruscan cella, completely closed by blind spaces between columns. The stairs around the temple are substituted by a high podium that is elongated in the façade with the stairs. Examples are Fortuna Viril and Maison Carrée.

They were also other kind of temples, with circular plan, similar to the Greek tholos, as Vesta’s Temple, but the main of these construction is Agripa’s Pantheon, devoted to all the gods.

Civilian architecture: Roman genius had its maximum expression in public buildings: basilicas, baths, theatres, amphitheatres, triumph arches. They tended to be located around the forum.
The basilica was an administrative and commercial building. It was a meeting space. The model was inherited from Greece. It has rectangular plan and consists of a central nave (with windows in the upper part to illuminate the interior) and two smaller at both sides, lower and narrower, separated by columns. The wall of the end is semicircular, creating an apse. The cover was barrel vault. Example: Majencio’s Basilica.

Baths are buildings created for hygiene and spare time. They are monumental with great variety of services: libraries, massage rooms, and the three main rooms: frigidarium for cold water, tepidarium for warm water and caldarium for hot water. Besides they were changing rooms called apodyterium. There are concrete buildings, covered in marble, of great proportions. They were covered with semi-spherical and ribbed vaults. Example: Caracalla’s Baths.

Entertainment buildings.

Theatre. It is similar to the Greek but the essential difference is that it was not carved on a hill, but artificially built, with the grades standing on a vault system. The orchestra was reduced to a semicircle because of the more reduced importance of the choir in Roman plays. The scene consisted of three lintelled bodies with rich decoration of columns and sculptures. Example: Merida, Marcelo.

Amphitheatre was a building created by the Romans. It is the result of the fusion of two theatres. It was designed for gladiators’ combats and spectacles with wild animals. It usually had circular or elliptical plan, surrounded by grades to ease the vision from any point. Below the sand there was a complex net of corridors with cages and different rooms for the service. The most important is the Coliseum.

Circus was designed for horse and carts races and also for athletic competitions. It is an adaptation of the Greek stadium. Its plan is long and it has a central element or spine, that divides the sand longitudinally. It was surrounded by grades. Example: Maximus.
Commemorative buildings: triumphal arches and columns. They were used to remember some exploit of their emperors or generals. They were located in the forum, in the crossings or in any other important place. They had propagandistic function.

Triumphal Arches. They have the shape of a city door but isolated from the rest of the wall. It can have one, two, three or more. Sometimes they can have squaren plan with four façades. They combine arch and lintel with a lot of decorative elements such as Corinthian columns and relives narrating the adventures of the person to whom they are devoted. A majority of them were built in stone or marble. Examples: Tito, Septimio Severo, Constantino.

Commemorative columns were of Roman invention and their finality is the same of that of the triumphal arches. Their shaft is covered with historical relieves distributed helicoidally. At the top they have the sculpture of the emperor honoured in them. Examples: Trajano, Marco Aurelio.

Funerary architecture:

Tombs. There were two funerary practises in Rome: inhumation and incineration. In the last case it was common to dig galleries and in the walls there were spaces for putting the urns. In the case of important families or citizens they had especial buildings in form of temples, towers, pyramids or circles. Example: Adrian’s Mausoleum.

Public works: bridges, aqueducts, reservoirs, and paved roads. There are military and commercial works, necessary for the dominium of the empire. There were an instrument for romanization and an example of their genius.

Domestic architecture:

The house. Popular house had different typologies. The buildings of the cities had several floors and they were called insulae. Rich families had domus in the city or villae in the countryside. These two types were quite similar in room distribution, with a courtyard or atrium; around it there were the rooms or cubiculi and the dinning room or tablinium. At the end there was normally a garden. With the time it was modified, the courtyard was surrounded by columns and it was open at the top and it had a central pond for containing the rain. Apart from these in some cases there were palaces that were conceit as real cities to serve the emperor.

Greek Sculpture

General characteristics
The roots of this sculpture are oriental and present a clear Egyptian influence. But, with the time, Greek developed their own sculpture, based on the depiction of human body. Their worry was the depiction of beauty, expression, movement and volume.
The chronology signals and evolution with three periods: Archaic until 5th century BC, Classical, 5th and 4th centuries BC and Hellenistic from the end of 4th century BC to the Roman conquer in 1st century BC.

The ideals appear in the depiction of human body as the reincarnation of physical beauty and spiritual equilibrium. Beauty comes from the measure and proportion and from this evolved the idea of canon. Naked human body becomes the thematic axis of Greek sculpture.
Artists look for the expression, understood as the exteriorization of the feelings. In this spiritual and physical dimension mix together. But it is an idealised expression where quietness and serenity, added to perfect equilibrium, are the basis of that physical and spiritual beauty. Only during the Hellenism real feelings appear with less idealization.
Greek artists tend to depict movement. They began by adapting the images to the architectonical frame to create single images or groups in which different characters are related in a dynamic way. Movement reinforced expressive values.
Artists were worried about volume depiction. They quickly abandoned the Egyptian look at the front to conceit the sculpture to be seen from any point of view. Thanks to this flat depictions were left apart but for the walls and pediments.
Materials used are: limestone during the archaic period, and bronze. During the classicism white marble was preferred. Many Greek works we have knowledge of reach to our times through Roman copies in marble of bronze originals.

Archaic period (7th- 6th BC)
The most representative creations are the Kuros (young athletes naked) and the Kore (dressed woman, probably priest). There is a certain unity of style. In general, images are rigid, looking at the front. The kuroi are monumental, with the arms glued to the body in symmetric compositions. Hair is disposed in a geometric way, eyes are almond-shaped, articulations are rigid and they try to smile. They tried to depict with naturalism the anatomy even when they tend to geometry. Worried about life, artists followed an evolution towards naturalism.
Korai were votive sculptures made of terracotta or stone that were left in tombs as a sacrifice. They are of small size (at least compared to the Kuroi) and their body is quite a flat piece of marble, a bit smaller at the belly and with a bit of volume in the breast. The character of block is more evident than in the kuroi. They are not expressive and there is a tendency towards ecstatic idealization. Their hair is rigid, following the Egyptian stile, with different levels. They were the traditional peplum, with very few folders and pretty symmetric. Their aspect is rigid, mainly in the case of those wearing the Dorian peplum, while the Ionic is more asymmetric and dynamic, with abundant folders. Geometry is a mark of identity.

Transition to the Classicism. The way towards perfection.
Sculpture received its impulse from the relief. Around 500 BC the pediments of Egina and Olympia were done. They are samples of composed sculptures, where the images are accommodated to the architectonical frame. They are an example of the evolution towards naturalist forms, with moderate depiction of feelings. Images adopt natural attitudes, but they still being rigid, clashing with the first notes of movement. This major flexibility is completed with a bigger thematic variety.
Apart from the pediments mentioned, other good examples of this period are the Ludovisi throne, where the clothes permit the visualization of the feminine body, and the bronze of the Delphi’s Cart Rider, an ecstatic image with very expressive face, eyes that appear to be natural and polychrome in order to offer a more naturalistic image.

Classical plenitude. (5th -4th BC).
It is the golden age of Greek art, with the prototypes of classical beauty. It is Pericle’s century, a period of economic and political expansion. The ideal of beauty does not have just a physical dimension but a deep spiritual dimension too. Proportion and equilibrium are the basis for the Athenians citizenship that reaches a zenith with the triumph of the democracy.
Miron: He was the author of the Discobolous in which he expressed his interest in the depiction of human characters in movement. The composition is ambitious and multiplies points of view. Anatomic study is correct, with well worked muscles but the expression of the head does not belong to the moment of maximum effort depicted.
Polyclitus (theorist of human anatomy). His main worries were body proportions and the influence of the masses in the attitudes. In his work he theorised about the canon or rule. For him beauty stands in the harmony of the body. His work Doriforus, presents an idealised anatomy and the canon is 1/7, this is, the head is the seventh part of the body. Geometry influences in the depiction of some parts of the body, using perfect segments. The face is divided into three parts: forehead, nose and mouth. Everything is measured. The head is a perfect sphere to which hair is adapted. It is a depiction of perfection and rationality. Composition is asymmetric, with contraposto or a foot advance to demonstrate physical and spiritual equilibrium. This dynamism allowed the multiplication of points of view. Other work is Diadumenos.
Phidias (Creator of the prototypes that depict the ideal of classical beauty, the sculptor of Gods). His work is linked to Pericles and Athens. He directed the works of the Parthenon and the decoration of its walls, its metopes, triglyphs and the sculpture of Athenea Parthenos. He was reputed by the serene beauty of the faces, the flexibility and transparency of the clothes and the combination of equilibrium and life. His images are grandiose, with exquisite proportions. The relieves of the Parthenon are his best work due to the wise composition and the beauty and grandiosity of the attitudes. The technique of the wet clothes allowed him to depict the anatomy of the characters and accentuates the effect of the light on the surfaces.

Late Classicism (mid 4th century BC).
After the plenitude of the classicism there is a trend towards baroque sculptural forms, stylising the canons and losing the tighten orthodoxy of the complete equilibrium, harmony and proportion. This phenomenon is parallel to the historical moment of Greek history. The crisis of the democracy and the Peloponnesus Wars announced the dramatic expression that sculpture shows during this period. Realism can be seen in the proliferation of portrait. There is an intention of expressing human feelings. Religious subjects are treated as daily depictions, with more scepticism. Although classical idealism continues, sculptors tend to look for new forms or prototypes of ideal beauty. The main artists of the period are Praxitele, Scopas and Lyssipos.

Lyssipos with his work Apoxiomeno created a new canon of male beauty, longer and slimmer than Polyclitus. The head is now 1/8 of the body, with longer legs and less volume of the head. The subject is also different because it is not the triumphant athlete neither the moment of maximum tension, but the moment after the competition, nothing heroic, when the athlete is cleaning himself. It created a new spatial dimension at elongating the arms. It does not look at the front and the sculpture can be seen from any point of view.

Skopas represents the crisis of Phidias serenity. His images move with violence. The main are the Menade and Mausolo.

Praxitele in his works created human characters full of grace and without the majesty and seriousness of former periods. His images have the impression of being dreamers. The artist uses praxitelic bend to make the images indolent, with a body that curves. In the faces he used the sfumato, polishing the marble, especially around the eyes. These good transmit melancholic states of the soul, full of nostalgic feelings. Main works: Hermes of Olympia, Venus of Arles.

Hellenism (4th-1st BC)
It is a period of great chronological and geographical wideness where Greek tradition influenced the culture of other territories that were part of Alexandre’s empire. Classical tradition and oriental influences are mixed to create and express, through the art, a new conception of the life. They continue with the technical knowledge of classicism to which they add a deep realism. Disequilibrium is preferred to serene attitudes, drama to relaxed faces, and ugliness to classical beauty. Baroque work dominate, full of intense movement and tension.
Subjects are not the traditional (Gods, athletes, heroes). Artists look for inspiration in the life around themselves. The treatment is realistic and with deep psychology in the portrait, direct and sincere, without idealization. It is an attempt to individualise the portrayed person. Love Goddess is an important character of inspiration, but she appears in a great variety of attitudes. Daily characters and gestures are frequent. Old people, ugliness, imperfection, childhood, subjects before considered not important enough to be depicted now are the centre of sculpture. Relief reaches to depict the perspective of the backgrounds to create the illusion of deep sceneries. The unity of style of the former period is lost and there are several schools in Pergamun, Rhode, and Alexandria.
Rhode: Colossus, Samotracia’s Victory, Laoconte and his sons, Farnesio Bull.
Pergamun: Gale dying, Gigantomaquie.
Alexandria: The Nile.

Greek Architecture

Basic ideas
Greeks liked to create proportioned and equilibrated buildings. It is an architecture to be seen, not to enter in. Due to this the sculptural values and volumes are taken into account, as if the building was a sculpture. For the Greek artist beauty is proportion and measure, just the opposite to the architecture of some other old empires that developed a colossal architecture. Greek architecture has a human dimension, to honour their Gods, and it is just anti-colossal.

The way in which the polis were organised did not ease the development of a palace architecture but it paved the way for other buildings, both civilian and religious: theatres, sanctuaries, gymnasiums in which they combined the ideal of beauty with practical solutions according to city life.

The basic Greek building and the materialization of the aesthetic ideals is the temple, which is conceit as God’s residence, not as a place for praying. Due to this the inside lacks of importance while the exterior is carefully worked.

Urbanism had an important development. In Mileto the architect Hipodamo put into practice, for the first time, his orthogonal plan, with straight and uniform rooms, that would be the basis of modern urbanism in our times.

Building systems
Greek architecture is lintelled (this is, they use straight line in the superior part of doors and windows and in the covers). Horizontal and vertical lines, combined, offer the impression of serenity and equilibrium they aimed at achieving.

The column is the characteristic element, and its treatment defines the three architectonical orders (Doric, Ionic and Corinthian). The concept of order is the relation between the different parts of the building. Doric is the simplest style, with his column without basis, the shaft with lines ending in sharp edges and a simple capital, just with some mouldings. The tablature is divided in metopes and triglyphs. Ionic order is a bit higher and more stylised, with basis, column in which the shaft has lines but ending in blunt edges and the capital with volutes. The tablature is not divided vertically, but horizontally, with three bands. Corinthian is the most decorated. It is similar to the Ionic in the basis and the shaft but the capital is a kind of basket with acanthus leaves and small volutes. The tablature is similar to the Ionic.

The constructive materials were stone (limestone) and, during the classical period, white marble from the Penteliko. The stones of the walls are isodomus, this is, perfectly cut and ordered, without any kind of mortar. The buildings were polychrome.

Resources
Looking for visual harmony, Greek recoursed to several technical resources to correct the optical deformations a building produces when been seeing from the distance. Some of the measures taken were: the tablature and the estilobatus (last stair) are curved to the top in the middle; columns are curved to the middle, to eliminate the impression of fall, the entasis is the enlargement of the column in the middle, to avoid the impression of concavity. Columns in the sides are bigger than the rest so that from the distance all appear to be equal. The distance between columns is different too. All these imperfections made possible to see the building as perfect from the outside.

Greek temple

Its origins are in the pre-Hellenic megaron, which was built in wood. The structure is of a rectangular plan, with longitudinal axis. There are also temples with circular plan and centralised axis that are known as tholos.

The internal division consists of three rooms: the first one or porch, open to the outside is the pronao, the second one or main room is the nao or cella, where the chapel of the God and its gigantic sculpture were; the last room is the opistodomo, and its function was to keep the treasure of the temple.

Temples are located in isolated areas with holy character. The cult was celebrated in the outside, in front of the main temple. It was built on top a series of stairs or crepis to make it easier to be seen and separate from the humidity of the floor. The façade is the main part in which the orders are developed.

Typology of the temple
The classification is made taking into account the disposition and number of columns. Depending on the disposition, temples can be: antae when they have pillars in the lateral walls; when the building has columns in one of the façades is called prostyle, when the columns appear in frontal and back façades it is called amphiprostyle and when the building is surrounded by columns it is known as peristyle . When instead of a line of columns around this is double we are in front of a dipter temple. Finally, the circular temple is monpter because it has one line of columns.

The second classification depends on the number of columns in the main façade and the temple can be tetrastile with four columns, hexastile with six and octastile with eight.

In some areas, as in the case of Athens, the religious buildings are concentrated in a holy place that is known as the Acropolis.

Greek theatre
The plays had a chorus of up to fifty people, for whom the orchestra or first line of sites was. The centre was called skene and it was a circular space. The theatres were originally built on a very large scale to accommodate the large number of people on stage, as well as the large number of people in the audience, up to fourteen thousand. Mathematics played a large role in the construction of these theatres, as their designers had to able to create acoustics in them such that the actors' voices could be heard throughout the theatre, including the very top row of seats. Other element was the paraskenia or wall behind the scene and behind it was the proskenion that separated the audience from the stage. In this area there were rooms for material and other elements of the theatre.

Other buildings
They were related to civil life:
· The propylon or porch, forming the entrance to temple sanctuaries (the best-surviving example is the one of the Acropolis of Athens
· The fountain house, a building where women filled their vases with water from a public fountain;
· The stoa, a long narrow hall with an open colonnade on one side, which was used to house rows of shops in the agoras (commercial centres) of Greek towns
· The palestra or a gymnasium, the social centre for male citizens. These peripterally enclosed space open to the sky were used for athletic contests and exercise.
· Greek towns also needed at least one bouleterion or council chamber, a large public building which served as a court house and as a meeting place for the town council.

Last Trends in Architecture

Since mid 20th century Architecture has experience great change. In one hand, the increasing interest in urban planning not only involves the construction of the building themselves, but it also asked for its inclusion in an area and in consonance with deep studies of their physical, social and economic impact. On the other hand, the development of new and revolutionary materials has made possible the creation of some buildings that in a recent past would have been unthinkable.

Innovative Architecture

It combines the imagination of the architects and engineers with the aesthetic impact of materials such as reinforced concrete. Structural solutions are revolutionary and, in addition to use industrial materials they created sophisticates spaces through the distribution of light and the use of materials not frequent in architecture, underlining their tactile qualities. The pioneer of this architecture would be Alvar Aalto. Other architects working in this way are Eero Saarinen, Nervi, Utzon or Kahn. Their sign of identity is the use of industrial material to solve difficult structural problems.

International Style

This style has its roots in the works of the Bauhaus and it developed in the US thanks to the influence of Mies van der Rohe and his disciples. This style is well suited to large metropolitan apartment and office towers. These building proved to have a commercial potential and were extremely efficient for large-scale construction in which the module could be repeated indefinitely. Inner spaces became standardized, predictable, and profitable and exterior reflected the monotony of the interiors. The blank glass box became ubiquitous. Even when these buildings are considered examples of an austere classicism, they are also considered coldly impersonal. Architects working in this style are Stirling, Kenzo Tange, or Philip Johnson.

Post-modern Architecture

Between about 1965 and 1980 architects and critics began to espouse tendencies resulting in a style that is not cohesive but that has a distinct set of principles. Postmodernists value individuality, intimacy, complexity and occasionally even humour. Some architects, such as Venturi, defended an architecture that can produce any kind of buildings, being them equally filling stations or fast-food restaurants. Some works have references to old style and can use vivid colours. Other architects of this movement are Graves, Meier, Jahn or Moore.

High-Tech and Deconstructivism

The High-Tech style came to prominence in the 1970s and 1980s through the work of the architects Richard Rogers, Renzo Piano and Norman Foster. Its origins lie in the 19th century when new industrial techniques and materials, previously used on engineering projects such as bridges, began to be applied to architecture. High-Tech buildings are typically constructed of steel and glass, make innovative use of technology and are often likened in appearance to the machines because of the tendency to draw attention to, rather than conceal, structural and functional elements.

Postmodernism is not the major strand in the most recent avant-garde architecture. An entirely different approach is represented by the style or idiom known as High-Tech, in which expressive use is made of the constructional and operational aspects of a building, with features such as supporting members or heating pipes fully exposed to view.

Deconstructivism is the term used to characterize buildings in which elements such as fractured forms or warped planes undermine conventional notions of stability and harmony. The works of Frank Gehry or Zaha Hadid can be considered good examples of this style.

Monumentality and New Techniques in Sculpture.

Until mid 20th century a majority of the three dimensional works were mere objects. The sole monuments were those commanded by the fascism, with a promotional aim. After that, the creation of big sculptures began with the organization of competitions to create works for deter purposes. A majority of the creations that were done were abstract. It looked that the projects of the Constructivism were going to be the models of the new production, at least because they represent a kind of monumental works. At the same time the development of techniques or the invention of new technologies made it possible to give duration and monumentality to what had been ephemeral or temporary in the construction of the pioneers.

A significant author at these levels is Calder. After receiving a first public commission in 1952 he acquired a fame that enabled him to inscribe in space even larger and loftier designs that could be produced only by industrial methods.

Henry Moore

The British Henry Moore was one of the first contemporary sculptors to encounter the possibility of projecting his imagination into public space. He had encountered archaic art that freed him from subjection to the model from nature; then the influence of Arp and Picasso steered him towards a more abstract expression that sought less to reproduce than to create organic forms justified solely by their presence and expression by their vitality the growth he discovered in the natural elements he began to collect: bones, pebbles, tree-stumps, seashells. There products of nature inspired his direct carving.

Other of his ways of proceeding revealed asymmetry to him as a dynamic principle. He was led to experiment with the mass with a hole pierced through it, from which he would renew the relation between sculpture and surrounding space. He was not unaware of the possibilities of abstraction, but most of his works preserved a biomorphic character. He achieved this osmosis between human representation and the understanding of organic forms essentially in the reclining or recumbent figure, which he preferred as a subject above all others and which gave him the pretext for his most daring construction.

When Moore took the step to monumentality, he developed a landscape sculpture in an especially close relationship with nature, in that he executed each of his pieces on a particular site. Large-sized works led him to prefer bronze, this is, modelling. Moore’s works offered a sensual experience: direct, tactile, but also spiritual in referring to another consciousness of life and its development. With him, representation of movement disappears in the expression of forms preserving the imprint of the demands of growth and the scars of time.

Chillida

Other of the new possibilities of construction in space of the 20th century included assemblage and iron. The two converged in the works of artists such as Picasso and Julio Gonzalez. One of the best representatives of iron sculpture is Eduardo Chillida.

This architect of formation did several sojourns to Paris where he entered in contact wit modern art. He turned away from figurative representations and began working with iron at the mid of the century. For him iron offered the approach to and confrontation of space by a way of a dynamic force in which the ductility of the material and the strong purpose that shapes it are combined.

Working in wrought, then welded iron turned him away from the concept of mass by offering him new relations between construction and space: his assemblages embarked on the conquest of the air. His first works were inspired by the form or the craftsman’s and peasant’s articles of ordinary use, but he transported them poetically into empty space, attaching them by a single fixed point to the ground or the pedestal, from which they radiated in manifold directions. Combining space, clawing the wind, he defied the laws of static. He recognised the demands and possibilities of metal, which was a rendered supple and malleable by its passage through fire, but which also retained the marks of the blows that shaped it, or of the force that twisted it. This physical presence of work of which the finished piece kept the imprint and which made it possible to measure in imagination the time and effect of the process of elaboration would assume great importance in contemporary creation.

Working with tubes or bars, Chillida found that they divided up space. The core of matter was replaced by emptiness; the mass by air; but air was all the more meaningful in that Chillida developed his forms by following their growth. Creation is a combat with and against matter, a confrontation with the elements: fire and water.

Chillida’s forms abandon verticality to develop like knotted and forceful calligraphy. Refusing to let himself be guided by the technical know-how he had rapidly acquired in 1956 turned to a thicker material which he twisted or unwound, but which kept in its fold the violence that bent it to the sculptors will. After that Chillida attempted other materials such as wood, which allowed him to work on a larger scale. He was to carry over this experience with metal into alabaster and granite, compact materials which react to light, that light which steel and later Cor-Ten steel (rusted steel) would led him to prefer in more serene architectural compositions where the impact of gesture vanished in the continuity of spirals, drawing the spectator inward to the hollowed-out centre of the heart. These knots of metal opened onto the mystery of the infinite and the void. Chillida became a builder of the invisible.

Oteiza

Having unsuccessfully tried to get into architecture school in Madrid, he began training in the visual arts. He travelled to South America, where he was during the Civil War. He came back in 1948 and tried to develop a kind of organisation of artists but with little success. In 1950 he was commissioned to make the sculptures that would form the religious iconography of the Aranzazu’s sanctuary. The project consisted of a Piety and the frieze of the Apostles, 14 hollowed-out figures, with a great expressive force and rhythmic arrangement, in a complex which combined architecture and the visual arts.

In 1950 he began an experimental phase in his sculpture in which the presence of matter and mass as formal elements was reduced and the artist sought out active empty spaces charged with energy. This desire for experimentation applied to his sculptural work. He aimed at liberating empty spaces by merging double and triple low-density units, at the same time developing the progressive emptying of his figurative sculptures.

He developed his idea of emptying sculpture to the point of defining emptiness as the space of spiritual relief, the protection of the incomplete man, convinced that all empty space aesthetically de-occupied is spiritually receptive. He presented the de-occupation of the sphere and cube. This experimental search was to culminate in his “empty boxes” and “metaphysical boxes”. In this process he managed to activate empty and receptive spaces, provided with an eternal and metaphysical essence. With the completion of the Experimental Process, Oteiza considered that his sculptural experimentation had concluded.