What is the precise nature of space? Is it power? Absence? Does space occupy space? Does it need to contain something physical, or can it merely contain something imagined? "Every figure has a presence," noted sculptor Barbara Hepworth of her work, work that could be characterized by abstract figures dialoguing with the space between and around them. "You can barely have any standing object which doesn't," she continued.

Basque painter and sculptor Eduardo Chillida (January 10, 1924 - August 19, 2002) called this dialogue a dialectic in his Writings. A dialectic is a form of dialogue that builds and unravels itself through question and answer. A dialectic between a dimensional figure and equally - perhaps, but not necessarily oppositely - its void. Although to Chillida, the void was more than absence; it was an interior space "always accessible." Hepworth would have agreed. 

Chillida explains:

The solid-void dialectic, one of the most enthralling for a sculptor, is false when the solid only pretends to be solid but isn't. An interior space must always be accessible. The pure, clear dialogue that emerges between matter and space - its beauty at the limit - is due, in part, I believe, to the fact that either space is very fast matter or matter is very slow space. Isn't the limit a boundary, not only between densities but also between speeds?

Eduardo Chillida in Amsterdam, 1969.

Does space have speed? It certainly has boundaries. Is it bounded by what it's not, or is it more of what it is? These completely abstract conceptions of space begin to unravel into meaning when we realize that Chillida was born and raised in the Basque Country of Spain. The northern region is a location of indigenous people and language - unique from Spain - that had been repressed for many, many years by Spain's Fascist government. Separating physically from the Basque Country to work and exist as an artist, yet retaining allegiance to it as he did, Chillida thrust these issues into his creative conscience. From a place that existed and within something else - as opposed to existing as an autonomous self - generates questions of existence, connection, and belonging again - met through abstract figures.

"Wind Comb", Eduardo Chillida; in Donostia-San Sebastián, Basque Country, Spain.

Any space that brings us into contact with 'immeasurable space' - is it a spatial unity, or is it part of the great unity? Is it possible to situate space outside of the great unity? Isn't that far-away space also space of another time? Is it possible to place space outside of the great unity? Isn't that isolated space also space of another time? Is any space that brings us into contact with what Novalis calls 'immeasurable space' a spatial unity? I think that reflecting on space without taking into account density and gravitation is thoroughly stupid.

What is outside of space? Is that space, too? Are we formed by the space that is not us? Are we the void?

Our immediate space is also our most intimate. There are rumors that critic Walter Benjamin took his own life when he imagined the Nazis descending on his beloved book collections. He was crossing the border to Spain at the time, so he did not know the Nazis were there, but equally, he did not know they were not there. Our own space is so personal, even if it exists away from us. 

How we arrive at our space matters, too: Hemingway needed to descend the stairs to write while writer Dani Shapiro shlepped to a room at the end of a long hall. When I read that octogenarian David Hockney made tree paintings en plein air during the Covid lockdown on his iPad, I wondered, would he have so beautifully explored the same technology had he been confined to the studio? 

Our intimate space is the most significant, and Chillida's personal, working space is no exception. It is the locale of all his mind-opening considerations.

I've spent my life searching, here, in my studio-my favourite place for the unknown, trying to touch what I do not know. I've realised that time exists in my sculpture, in a version different from the standard temporal one. This version is that of time's brother: space. Space is the twin brother of time. The two concepts are absolutely parallel and similar. And since I'm so conditioned by space, I've always been very interested in time. My time is very slow, to be sure; but that's traditional time-the time of the clock-which doesn't interest me. I'm interested in time as harmony, rhythm, and measure.

Illustration by Eduardo Chillida.

It is not simply how we define our space, with figures and voids; it is how we pass through and use that space. Rituals and routines, ways of walking that wear out part of the rug or windows cleaned only as far as our height affords. This is the essence of our interaction with space. Chillida used a particular additive to the iron that rusted into magnificent ochre, he exploded metal forms that whispered of human appendages and trees. They seem familiar, but not accurate. Our cognition of that distance is also space.  

Chillida explains how his work functions:

I want the space in my work to be like the oil that allows a machine to function. Masses that slide and communicate with one another. But I don't want to start the machine; I want my works to be silent, still the only way to depart, in part, from time. I want to go on enclosing space in my work. Perfect space is hidden; I must arrive at it in stages. My present works will hold the key to my future works, as the future ones may become hermetic and hide their heart, purpose, and strength. And all because of physics, not for any other reason.

Spain's most beloved modern poet, Federico García Lorca, felt the same repressive pressure from Franco's Fascist regime and was ultimately executed for his poetic profession and homosexuality. His poems transformed space and time in his way - he used snails as a metaphor for human emotion. When we transform space, we exact control over it, control we are denied elsewhere.

Starry Snail

You crept out after the rain.
After the starry rain

The stars have built a small house for you
By themselves out of your bones
Where are you taking it on that towel

Time goes limping after you.
To catch you up to trample you
Put out your horns, snail...

Read more on how we anchor their memories in space to make them real, how people hold their own space and welcome others into it, and Gaston Bachelard's configuration of poetry, space, and our deep psychological voice. All these topics have in common that they look at something physically and materially absent and give it power and presence as if it were dimension and material. If nothing else, space is the invitation to do precisely that.