Julio González

Barcelona, 1876 – Arcueil, 1942

Julio González was one of the Catalan painters and sculptors considered internationally as one of the precursors of modern sculpture. His work evolved over time into cubism, becoming one of the central figures of modern plastic arts. Born into a family of goldsmiths, he worked in the family workshop with his father and one of his brothers, the artist Joan González (1868-1908). The goldsmithing works are relevant to understand the development; these were what gave him the technical mastery that made Brancusi and Picasso look for him as a collaborator at the end of the 1920s. Julio González also trained at La Lonja and frequented Els Quatre. Gats. In 1900, he settled in Paris until his death. Despite the artist’s vocation to advance his path as a painter, the difficulties of opening up in this world forced him to continue making goldsmith pieces that allowed him to earn a living, which is why he did not hold his first individual exhibition until 1922. During the years 1903-1904 he used the Gargallo workshop, in 1910 he began to make masks with embossed metal and finally in 1918 he made the great decision to enter the workshops of La Soudure Autogène Française in Boulogne-sur-Seine where he became familiar with the industrial welding technique, later applied in his works. During the 1920s, Julio González exhibited at several Parisian exhibitions such as the Salon de Automne, the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and the Salon des Indépendants. The 1930s was the central period of his production where his work adopted an abstract and essential style where he dealt side by side with artists such as Torres García and surrealism. The artist defines his work as “drawing in space”, where the volumes of his sculptures are described by the three-dimensional play of flat or linear shapes made of iron. González synthesizes in a single singular and personal language the contradictions between Surrealism and Constructivism, the figurative and the abstract, the academic conventions and the Avant-garde that were present in the Parisian artistic environment.  In 1936, he participated in the Paris exhibition of the SAI (1936) and in the Cubism and Abstract Art exhibition at the Museum Of Modern Art in New York. Julio González died in his house in Arcueil in 1942.