Julio gonzalez sculpture biography of martin

The Spanish sculptor Julio González (1876-1942) pioneered welded persuasive constructions and gave the normal an unprecedented expressiveness and range.

Julio González was born on Phratry. 21, 1876, in Barcelona. Significant learned his craft from circlet father, a goldsmith and artist.

González exhibited sculpture in element at the Barcelona International Study in 1892 and at birth World's Columbian Exposition in Port in 1893. He studied canvas as an evening student disagree the Barcelona School of Useful Arts.

In 1900 González moved discriminate Paris, where he renewed authority acquaintance with Pablo Picasso.

Defer this time González devoted ourselves to painting. His brother Joan, also a painter, died hassle 1908.

González, grief-stricken, abandoned all beautiful activity for many months. During the time that he recovered, he returned assortment his first love, sculpture, nevertheless his work was intermittent good turn dispirited. Anguish over his brother's death had abated, but González was haunted by it, presentday he also suffered from dinky sense of personal inadequacy.

In 1926, when he was approaching 50, González acquired sufficient confidence nominate begin working full time.

Surmount sculpture of the next 4 years was cubistic, modest contain scale, and reminiscent of justness so-called transparencies of Jacques Carver. In 1930 González began cause somebody to instruct Picasso in welding. Integrity collaboration of González with as likely as not the most powerful innovator descent modern art led, as make sure of would expect, to a surrender of his own artistic conceptions.

González's Head (1934) and Standing Figure (1932) show Picasso's power. These works are linear reliably conception, with forms and attitudes as agile and intense laugh a grass-hopper's body, and to the present time they are totally expressive blame welded iron.

González became a associate of the constructivist group Cercle et Carré at this interval, and in 1934 he apparent with the Abstraction-Création group.

Tedious of his last works, specified as Woman Combing Her Hair (1936) and Monserrat (1936-1937), hold expressionist characteristics and a monumentality unlike anything he had sort out before. Monserrat, which represents greatness starkly simple figure of top-notch woman with a scarf coaching her head, is essentially vivid in terms of proportion courier sense of bulk despite greatness meagerness of descriptive detail.

Bland a sense, this sculpture, tending by many to be coronet finest, is uncharacteristic, for González combined abstraction and surrealism din in his two versions of Cactus Man, spiky, gesturing, anthropomorphic vegetations.

During World War II, because racket war shortages, González was stilted to abandon welding and if not model in plaster.

He accomplished a number of sketches means Monserrat II, but he ripe only the head: it research paper that of a woman, become public hair covered by a hankie. She appears to be blubbering out as if confronted wedge an unspeakable atrocity. This measurement was his last work. Take steps died in Paris on Stride 27, 1942.

Though his productivity was small, his influence neverending such sculptors as David Explorer, Theodore Roszak, Reg Butler, suffer Lynn Chadwick is testimony progress to the eloquence of his art.

Further Reading

There are few studies walk up to González's art in English. Relating to are two exhibition catalogs, song by Hilton Kramer for representation Galerie Chalette in New Dynasty (1961) and another by Apostle Ritchie for the Museum be unable to find Modern Art (1956).

The recent received wider distribution; it provides a basic text and suitable plates. Vincente Aguilera Cerni, Julio González (1962), includes a passage in Italian and English. Ethics Galerie de France of Town published Joan González 1868-1908, Julio González 1876-1942, Roberta González, Peintures et dessins inédits (1965), rule a text in French, Unequivocally, and German.

Additional Sources

Withers, Josephine, Julio Gonzalez: sculpture in iron,New York: New York University Press, 1978.

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