HISTORICAL DICTIONARY A–Z - Spain and Portugal: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present - page 154

of struggle against the French occupiers,
Charles IV was held captive in France, along
with his queen and his minister, Godoy.
After the collapse of the Bonaparte regime,
the former prince of Asturias, now F ERDI -
NAND VII, returned to Spain, and his father
spent the remaining years of his life drifting
about Europe, eventually dying in Italy.
A pious, amiable, and well-intentioned
monarch, Charles IV lacked the cunning, or
even the common sense, to handle the
demands of kingship in tumultuous times.
His apparent ignorance of his wife's rela-
tionship with Godoy was merely one aspect
of his inability to grasp the domestic and
international situations with which he was
confronted. Totally out of his depth, Charles
IV eventually drifted away from Spain and
was essentially forgotten long before his
actual demise.

(together with Constantin Brancusi and
Alberto Giacometti) and undoubtedly the
most esteemed Spanish sculptor of his time,
Chillida was trained as an architect at the
University of Madrid but turned to sculp-
ture in the 1940s. Drawing upon the crafts-
man tradition of his Basque heritage, he
drew attention with his ability to combine
the solidity of iron with an openness and
lightness of technique in his abstract work,
later bringing similar skill to larger sculp-
tures in granite. By the late 1960s he had
attracted sufficient international attention
to be included in the Franco regime's sup-
port of modern art as a vehicle for gaining
overseas prestige. Controversies provoked
by the clash between political and artistic
priorities led to an unprecedented flare-up
of cultural protest against the reactionary
regime and marked the opening of a new
era in Spanish public art.
Chillida's awards and the recognition
they confirmed included the Japanese
Imperial Prize for Art, the Sculpture Prize
at the Venice Biennale, the Kandinsky
Prize, and the Mellon Prize. By the time
the Guggenheim Museum opened its
shrine to modern art at B ILBAO in the late
1990s, Chillida's renown earned him a
grand retrospective show as part of the
opening ceremonies.
Chillida was not only an international
master but also among Spain's most prolific
and popular artists, earning multiple com-
missions at home as well as elsewhere in
Europe and in the United States. Although
some of his creations were on a modest
scale, he had a clear preference for monu-
mental work. The best known of these
sculptures is Peines del viento (“Wind combs,”
1977). Set dramatically on the Basque coast
near his native Donostia-San Sebastián, its

Chile
A subordinate region of the Inca Empire by
the early 15th century, Chile was invaded by
Spaniards in the course of their conquest of
the Inca during the 1530s. Permanent settle-
ments were established in Chile by the 1550s,
although the southern region would remain
in contention for many generations. Chile's
character as an active military frontier zone
was emphasized by the creation of the Cap-
taincy General of Chile in 1778 as a depen-
dency of the Viceroyalty of P ERU . Chileans
revolted against Spain in 1810 but did not
secure their full independence until 1818.

Chillida, Eduardo (1924-2002)
Spanish sculptor
Hailed as “one of the three pillars upon
which 20th-century sculpture rests”