Martin Chirino was born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in 1925. An early adopter of iron as an artistic material, the artist was adamant to ‘forge’ his own path, even at a young age. Initially steered by his father – a naval engineering supervisor for Blandy Brothers & Company in Puerto de la Luz – towards a naval career he adopted for a few years, Chirino saw in iron an artistic potential he was eager to explore. He began his artistic studies in 1944 at the academy of sculptor Manuel Ramos, in his hometown. After moving to Madrid, he briefly enrolled at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the Complutense University in order to read English philology, but rapidly dropped out to attend the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts from which he graduated as a teacher by 1952. Following his graduation, Chirino embarked on career-shaping trips to Paris, Italy and London. In the English capital, he finalised his artistic training at the Slade School of Fine Arts, marvelled at the Sumerian, Egyptian and other archaic sculptures of the British Museum and encountered modern masters such as Julio González, Henry Moore, Jean Arp, Constantin Brancusi and Barbara Hepworth, who all eventually influenced Chirino’s sculpture.
Regular trips to the western African coast punctuated the artist’s early life, shaping his artistic eye and quest for identify. His very first series, Reinas Negras, attests as much. Pieces of this first collection were shown in his first solo exhibition held at the Ateneo de Madrid. A later exhibition here would see Chirino accepted into ‘El Paso’, an artistic group founded in 1957 and counting Antonio Saura, Manolo Millares, Manuel Rivera, Rafael Canogar, Luis Feito, Antonio Suárez, Pablo Serrano, Juana Francés, José Ayllón and Manuel Conde (the group eventually dissolved in 1960 following incompatible visions).
Exhibitions did much to solidify Chirino’s status around the world. In 1959, an entire room of the Spanish Pavilion was dedicated to his corpus during the São Paulo Biennial. In 1962, he travelled across the Atlantic for his first solo exhibition in New York at the Borgenicht Gallery (he had previously presented four works at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1960 as part of a Frank O’Hara selection).
The late 1960s were more culturally political in nature, starting with the drafting of the ‘Manifiesto de El Hierro’, linking the Canarian identity with the African continent. Following the same impetus, he signed the ‘Afrocán Document’ in Madrid. An exhibition entitled Afrocán, organised in Madrid’s Juana Mordó Gallery, swiftly followed. The exhibition travelled to the Grace Borgenicht Gallery in New York, generating much interest and press coverage. The Canarian symbolism continued with Lady Harimaguada (1996), which would become a symbol of the city and the name of a prize at the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival.
Accolades accumulated throughout Chirino’s career: in 1980 he received the National Award for Plastic Arts for all his work; in 1985 he was awarded the Gold Medal for Fine Arts; In 2004, the Real Casa de La Moneda Foundation awarded him the Tomás Francisco Prieto Award; in 2007, he was named an adoptive son of the Madrid municipality San Sebastián de los Reyes; in 2008 he received the Cristóbal Gabarrón Foundation International Award for Plastic Arts; in 2014, he became an honorary member of the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts; in 2016 he received the title of adoptive son of the Madrid municipality Morata de Tajuña where he resided for his last years.
In 2015, the Martín Chirino Art and Thought Foundation was inaugurated in the Castillo de la Luz in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. It features an exhibition space showing a permanent collection of 25 pieces by the artist, which offer a succinct retrospective of his career.
Chirino passed away in Madrid in 2019.
