Helena Almeida: 'Seduzir' [To Seduce, 2002] (detail)

Collection

Nu assis [Seated Nude]

Image caption
JULIO GONZÁLEZ

Nu assis [Seated Nude]

  • 1927-1928
  • Pencil on paper
  • 25,4 x 17,4 cm
  • Cat. D_287
  • Acquired in 2001
By:
Isabel Tejeda

The Banco de España collection has three works on paper by Julio González dating from the early 1900s, as well as a sculpture from his most interesting period, the 1930s. During the first decades of his career, González preferred to devote himself to drawing and painting, and it was not until the late 1920s that he began to focus on sculpture. These are three figurative drawings — in fact, three sketches: a vertical landscape, sketched out first in charcoal and then painted in watercolours; an academy work, depicting a nude of a seated woman viewed from behind (No. 1940 in the author's catalogue raisonné) which is very reminiscent of the drawings of Edgar Degas (the Marie-Thérèse Roux Collection has several similar pieces and even an oil sketch bearing the same title); and a countryside scene in pencil and watercolours (No. 1 566 in the author's catalogue raisonné), depicting what was to become a frequent motif in the artist's canon: a peasant woman at work, which has parallels with his 1927 sculpture, Small Profile of a Peasant Woman. In the following decade, the figure of La Montserrat was to become important as an archetype of the humble working mother suffering the horrors of war.

Long-Necked Head is a bronze multiple sculpture dating from 1932, of which eight copies were cast, one of which is in the MoMA in San Francisco. It was cast by the Godard foundry in Paris. There is also an iron version in the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris. Although most of the Catalan artist's works use iron, a material he found easy to work with, Roberta González, the artist's daughter, said that her father would have liked to work more with bronze, and with other more expensive materials such as gold, but could not always afford to do so. The sculpture, which sits atop a small cube-shaped pedestal, uses assembled lines and planes to depict, asymmetrically and schematically, a head with a long neck. It might seem abstract, but the title of the work suggests that it is based on a model taken from nature. This sculpture is representative of one of Gonzalez's approaches that was to have the greatest influence on later modern and contemporary art: drawing in space. Some authors consider Long-Necked Head to be the starting point for his cardinal sculpture Woman at a Mirror (1936-1937).

Isabel Tejeda

 
By:
Isabel Tejeda
Julio González
Barcelona 1876 - Arcueil 1942

Julio González is considered as the mentor of iron sculpture and one of the most important artists of the first half of the twentieth century. The son of a goldsmith, he studied at the Cercle Artístic Sant Lluc in his hometown while working in the family workshop where he trained in the art of iron forging and casting. In 1899 he moved to Paris, meeting Pablo Picasso almost on his arrival. It was while he was painting in pastel, under the influence of the painters Edgar Degas and Puvis de Chavannes, that he first began to make iron sculptures. In 1916 he worked in a factory supplying armaments for the war effort. There he learnt the industrial technique of combustion welding, which was to stand him in great stead some years later in his artistic work.

Towards the end of the 1920s he abandoned painting to focus on sculpture, creating masks and still lifes with clear cubist influences. During this period, he struck up a friendship with Pablo Gargallo and Constantin Brâncuși. In the 1930s, he made what was to be his greatest contribution to the history of modern sculpture, what he himself called 'drawing in space'. He collaborated with Picasso in the creation of several versions of Woman in the Garden. The simple planes that form the masses of the piece and contain certain figurative references, are joined by way of a fine, precarious structure, in which both line and void are essential in forming the volumes. He made works such as La Montserrat — displayed in the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris Exposition in 1937 — and Woman with Mirror, the first in a series of larger works. His work combines pieces with figurative references and others which, despite containing echoes of reality, appear more abstract, like outlines of the visible, whose titles give some clue to their meaning.

The most important collection of the Catalan sculptor's work is now in the Valencia Institute of Modern Art (Valencia). His work has been included in anthological exhibitions in major museums around the world, inter alia the Museum of Modern Art (New York, 1969); the Tate Gallery (London, 1970); the Musée Picasso de Antibes (France, 1990); the National Art Museum of Catalonia and the Reina Sofía Museum (Barcelona and Madrid, 2008); and the Whitechapel Art Gallery (London, 1990).

Isabel Tejeda

 
 
Tomás Llorens Serra Julio González. Catálogo general razonado de las pinturas, esculturas y dibujos, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Polígrafa, Generalitat Valenciana, IVAM, 2013, vol. III. Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 1.