Image: Chillida Leku, Hernani
Chillida Leku is presenting a summer programme that turns the museum into a place to spend the day, combining its permanent collection with activities that move between art, landscape and wellbeing. According to material circulated by masdearte and the museum’s own website, the season includes yoga and meditation sessions in nature, family activities and workshops, along with outdoor cinema nights and concerts by the Quincena Musical de San Sebastián. An extraordinary opening is also planned for the total solar eclipse on 12 August, when visitors will be able to see how shifting light alters the perception of Eduardo Chillida’s works in an event that will not repeat until 2053.
The programme is anchored by the exhibition 'Eduardo Chillida: Cuerpos geométricos', shown at Chillida Leku in Hernani, near San Sebastián. The museum’s website lists the exhibition dates as 25 June to 26 October 2026, while the masdearte newsletter describes it as running through 26 October. The exhibition looks across Chillida’s career through the lens of geometry, focusing on how he used geometric forms to think about space, matter and emptiness.
Rather than isolating a single period, the display is described as a survey of the sculptor’s whole trajectory. The museum says the show moves from his early plaster sculptures to works with an architectural character, with the sphere and the cube becoming keys to understanding the evolution of an artist for whom space was central to inquiry. That emphasis places the exhibition within the wider presentation of Chillida Leku itself, a museum whose landscape setting is integral to the experience of the collection.
The exhibition also brings contemporary voices into direct dialogue with Chillida’s work. The newsletter notes the inclusion of a glass sculpture by Larry Bell, in which light continuously changes the viewer’s perception of space, and a piece by Nora Aurrekoetxea, which reflects on the relationship between body, object and matter. Both additions are presented as invited works that enrich the exhibition’s central argument rather than as separate side presentations.
Chillida Leku’s own materials underline the museum’s broader identity as a site where art and nature are closely intertwined. The website describes the institution as a place where sculptures are integrated into the landscape, with beeches, oaks and magnolias surrounding large-scale steel and granite works in the garden. That setting frames the summer activities as part of a visit that extends beyond the galleries and into the grounds around Caserío Zabalaga.
Practical information listed on the museum site places Chillida Leku at Barrio Jauregui 66 in Hernani, with opening hours from Monday to Saturday, 10:00 to 19:00, and Tuesday closed. The site also gives standard admission at 14 euros and reduced admission at 10 euros, with entry free for children under eight. The exhibition 'Cuerpos geométricos' is the season’s main thread until late October.
