Julio Gonzalez

JULIO GONZÁLEZ PELLICER (Barcelona, 1876 - Arcueil, France, 1942).
"La fenetre", 1939-40.
Inks and watercolor on paper.
Titled, signed and dated on the back.
Certificate attached.
Work published in Volume VI of the catalog raisonné of drawings by Julio González of the Azcona Foundation, Boye Llorens Peters.
Bibliography: Josette Gibert, "Julio González dessins", Editions Carmen Martinez, 1975, p. 81.
Measurements: 15.5 x 8.5 cm; 43 x 35 cm (frame).

In this drawing, Gonzalez represents a woman with her back turned, contemplating the outside through a window. We only see the upper back, neck and head, with a short haircut, outlined with clean, confident lines.

The play of straight lines of the window frame and the simplified forms of the exterior landscape (a chimney, a roof) contrast with the organic softness of the female body. This opposition between the human and the architectural, between the warm and the geometric, becomes a recurring motif in her latest production.

The use of ink and watercolor reinforces the sensation of space and silence: the transparency of the grays and soft tones suggests distance, atmosphere, a contained melancholy. As in many of his drawings, there is no explicit narrative, but a visual meditation on form and emptiness, on the place of the human being before the outside world.

Julio González was born into a family of goldsmiths, learning the trade as a child. Later he studied Fine Arts at La Lonja in Barcelona. In 1900 he went with his family to Paris, where he frequented artistic circles and maintained contact with Picasso, Gargallo and Brancusi, among others. Around 1910 he began to work with embossed metal masks, with a style marked by naturalistic and symbolist features, as well as by a new conception of the human figure, with synthesized volumes and lines. During these years, Gonzalez began to participate in the Parisian salons, specifically in the Autumn Salon, the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon of the National Society of Fine Arts. In 1920 he opened his own forge workshop, and two years later he made his individual debut at the Povolovsky Gallery in Paris. At the end of the twenties he began to develop his first sculptures in wrought iron, a material that until then was considered merely decorative. During the thirties his work became more abstract, and the first spatial constructions appeared. After a long list of participations in solo and group exhibitions such as Spanish Art at the Jeu de Paume Museum (1936) or the Spanish Pavilion at the Universal Exhibition in Paris (1937), at the beginning of World War II his work, as a result of the shortage of iron, focuses on a new material, plaster, and on drawings with war themes. González is represented at the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, the Reina Sofía in Madrid, the IVAM in Valencia and the MoMA in New York, among many others.