Julio González

Private Collection, Paris
Galerie de France, Paris (until 1987)
Paco Rebés, Barcelona
Private Collection, Barcelona

Vincente Aguilera Cerni, Julio González, Rome, 1962, illustration of another cast pl. LVI
Vincente Aguilera Cerni, Julio, Joan, Roberta González - Itinerario de una dinastía, Barcelona, 1973, no. 243, illustration of another cast p. 281
Josephine Withers, Julio González, Sculpture in Iron, New York, 1978, no. 109, illustration of the original iron sculpture p. 82
Jörn Merkert, Julio González, Catalogue raisonné des sculptures, Milan, 1987, no. 208, illustration of another cast p. 226

Dark patina. Apart from some light surface dirt in the recesses of the work, this work is in very good condition.
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Personnage Allongé dates from one of the most fertile periods of Julio González's career, when he produced a series of iron masterpieces that transformed modern sculpture following his collaboration with Picasso from 1928 to 1932. It was Picasso's influence that changed the direction of Gonzalez's career; prior to 1928 he had been primarily a painter, despite his professional background in metalwork, but the experience of assisting Picasso in the execution of six metal sculptures during this period alerted him to the artistic possibilities of metal sculpture.

The present work is an elegant construction of abstract geometric forms that plays on the disparity between the mechanistic abstraction of the piece and its figurative subject. As he commented of his own work in 1930, 'A painter or sculptor can give a form to something which has no concrete form; such as light, colour, an idea. These forms will of course be imagined in reference to the human image. Difficult problems to be solved posed by the reinvented planes creating a new architecture' (Unpublished notes, circa 1930-31, Gonzalez Estate Archive, Paris). These sculptures are less about referencing a preconceived subject as a series of variations that are composed on an idea. The possibilities inherent in the materials of these works is as much of a determining factor behind the final form of the work as the subject, and Personnage Allongé constitutes a celebration of the act of craftsmanship and the properties of the material in which they are created.