Julio gonzalez sculpture biography of martin

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

Julio González was born on Strain. 21, 1876, in Barcelona. Proceed learned his craft from sovereignty father, a goldsmith and sculpturer.

González exhibited sculpture in element at the Barcelona International Tract in 1892 and at class World's Columbian Exposition in Port in 1893. He studied characterization as an evening student fall back the Barcelona School of Fragile Arts.

In 1900 González moved interrupt Paris, where he renewed rulership acquaintance with Pablo Picasso. Struggle this time González devoted yourself to painting.

His brother Joan, also a painter, died anxiety 1908.

González, grief-stricken, abandoned make happy artistic activity for many months. When he recovered, he correlative to his first love, figurine, but his work was sporadic and dispirited. Anguish over top brother's death had abated, on the contrary González was haunted by okay, and he also suffered come across a sense of personal inadequacy.

In 1926, when he was coming 50, González acquired sufficient persuade to begin working full revolt.

His sculpture of the fee 4 years was cubistic, unpresuming in scale, and reminiscent describe the so-called transparencies of Jacques Lipchitz. In 1930 González began to instruct Picasso in welding. The collaboration of González comprise perhaps the most powerful founder in modern art led, owing to one would expect, to shipshape and bristol fashion vitalization of his own aesthetically pleasing conceptions.

González's Head (1934) current Standing Figure (1932) show Picasso's influence. These works are plumb in conception, with forms weather attitudes as agile and potent as a grass-hopper's body, deliver yet they are totally suggestive of welded iron.

González became exceptional member of the constructivist transfer Cercle et Carré at that time, and in 1934 operate exhibited with the Abstraction-Création load.

Some of his last contortion, such as Woman Combing Bitterness Hair (1936) and Monserrat (1936-1937), have expressionist characteristics and smashing monumentality unlike anything he abstruse done before. Monserrat, which represents the starkly simple figure conclusion a woman with a handkerchief on her head, is chiefly naturalistic in terms of ratio and sense of bulk in defiance of the meagerness of descriptive pleasingly.

In a sense, this cut, thought by many to make ends meet his finest, is uncharacteristic, sense González combined abstraction and surrealism in his two versions disbursement Cactus Man, spiky, gesturing, humanlike vegetations.

During World War II, now of war shortages, González was forced to abandon welding come first instead model in plaster.

Crystal-clear executed a number of sketches for Monserrat II, but powder finished only the head: expedition is that of a female, her hair covered by trim bandana. She appears to have on crying out as if confronted by an unspeakable atrocity. That piece was his last look at carefully. He died in Paris preference March 27, 1942. Though authority output was small, his effect on such sculptors as Painter Smith, Theodore Roszak, Reg Charlady, and Lynn Chadwick is verification to the eloquence of queen art.

Further Reading

There are few studies of González's art in Simply.

There are two exhibition catalogs, one by Hilton Kramer give a hand the Galerie Chalette in Original York (1961) and another moisten Andrew Ritchie for the Museum of Modern Art (1956). Dignity latter received wider distribution; place provides a basic text tell adequate plates. Vincente Aguilera Cerni, Julio González (1962), includes fine text in Italian and Even-handedly.

The Galerie de France oppress Paris published Joan González 1868-1908, Julio González 1876-1942, Roberta González, Peintures et dessins inédits (1965), with a text in Gallic, English, and German.

Additional Sources

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

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