Peine del Viento (The Comb of the Wind)

You are standing at the edge of the continent, and three massive claws of rusted steel are reaching out from the rocks as if trying to grab the Atlantic. This is Peine del Viento -- The Comb of the Wind -- and it is the most famous sculpture in the Basque Country. Eduardo Chillida created it, but here is the thing that gets me. As a teenager in the nineteen forties, Chillida used to skip school on stormy days and come to this exact spot to watch the sea smash into the rocks. He called it his anvil of dreams. Decades later, he anchored twenty-seven tonnes of Corten steel into those same rocks and gave the whole thing to the city for free.

The installation is actually number fifteen in a series of twenty-three Wind Comb sculptures Chillida made over his career, starting in nineteen fifty-two. But this one -- finished in nineteen seventy-seven -- is the masterpiece. Each of the three pieces weighs over nine tonnes and is bolted directly into the coastal granite.

Now look down at the terrace beneath your feet. Architect Luis Pena Ganchegui designed this pink granite platform, and he hid something brilliant in it. There are blowholes cut into the stone. When storms roll in off the Bay of Biscay, waves crash into underground channels and shoot geysers of seawater straight up through the plaza. The ground literally erupts. On a big swell day, the whole terrace becomes part of the artwork -- mist and spray and roaring water turning the sculpture into something alive. Chillida wanted art that could not be separated from nature. He got it. If you are here on a calm day, come back when the weather turns. It is a completely different experience.