Peine del Viento XV

Interesting facts

The steel came from the Legazpi works of industrialist Patricio Echeverría, who lent Chillida a factory hall, ten of his best workers and 25 tonnes of steel.

Chillida began his Peine del Viento series in 1952, and the San Sebastián installation is the fifteenth of 23 works he eventually made under that title.

Local supporters began pushing for a tribute to Chillida in the late 1960s, and more than ten years passed before the city approved the project.

Two of the sculptures face each other across a short gap while the third stands apart farther out, a layout often read as past and future.

Peña Ganchegui paved the shoreline plaza in pink granite from Porriño in Galicia, stepping it down towards the sea like a small amphitheatre.

The plaza's blowholes reuse an old water channel, so breaking waves are funnelled beneath the paving and shot upwards through holes in the ground.

Before becoming a sculptor, Chillida kept goal for Real Sociedad in the 1942–43 season, until a knee injury in February 1943 ended his football career.

After leaving football Chillida studied architecture in Madrid, a background that shows in the way this work is built into the coastline itself.

Why it is worth it

At the far western end of San Sebastián's bay, where the city runs out and the Bay of Biscay begins, three massive forms of rusted steel grip the rocks like claws. This is the Comb of the Wind, known in Spanish as Peine del Viento XV and in Basque as Haizearen Orrazia, the sculptor Eduardo Chillida's most celebrated work and an inseparable part of his home city's coastline.

Chillida, born in San Sebastián, made the three sculptures, each weighing around 10 tonnes, and set them into natural outcrops rising from the Cantabrian Sea, where the waves break over them. The architect Luis Peña Ganchegui shaped the setting on the shore at the end of Ondarreta beach, a viewing area with openings in the ground through which the incoming waves force air and water upwards. In rough weather the place roars and spouts, and the sea becomes part of the piece. The ensemble was completed in 1976 and is regarded as a key work for both men.

The number XV in its title reflects the fact that it belongs to a long series of works Chillida titled Peine del Viento, which share their forms with his stelae, including those he dedicated to Picasso, Salvador Allende and Pablo Neruda. Here the theme found its definitive site. San Sebastián, Donostia in Basque, is a seaside city wrapped around the curve of La Concha bay, with its old quarter at the foot of Mount Urgull, and the sculpture closes the western side of the bay with a gesture of iron reaching towards the open ocean.

Getting there

The Comb of the Wind stands at the western end of Ondarreta beach, about 2.7 km from the centre of San Sebastián (Donostia). The nearest airport is San Sebastián Airport (EAS) in Hondarribia, about 18 km away in a straight line.

Peine del Viento XV

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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