Julio González

"Petit masque découpé Montserrat", 20th Century Bronze by Julio González

Circa 1930 - 1933

Biography Julio González (21 September 1876 – 27 March 1942), born in Barcelona, was a Spanish sculptor and painter who developed the expressive use of iron as a medium for modern sculpture. He was from a lineage of metalsmith workers and artists. His grandfather was a goldsmith worker and his father, Concordio González, a metalsmith worker who taught him the techniques of metalsmith in his childhood years. His mother, Pilar Pellicer Fenés, came from a long line of artists. Julio attended Circol Artist Sant Luc, a Catholic school whose model of education was based on the medieval art guilds and influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement in England. Ironwork 1932–1937 González created ironwork at this time that would establish him as "the father of all iron sculpture of this century". During the early 1930s, few artists utilized forged or welded metal as a potential medium for their art. This is because, at the time, many artists did not directly work with the medium. Rather, artists worked with a foundry and expert technicians to execute the works of art. González was unique in this instance because his work demanded an active interaction- something that required the skills shaped by a long and specialized apprenticeship. In 1937 he contributed to the Spanish Pavilion at the World Fair in Paris (La Montserrat, standing near Guernica), and to Cubism and Abstract Art at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Public collections The Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington D.C.), the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Kröller-Müller Museum (Otterlo, Netherlands), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Luís Ángel Arango Library (Bogotá, Colombia), the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art (Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois), Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes (France), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid) Museo Patio Herreriano de Valladolid (Spain), Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (Barcelona, Spain), the Museum of Modern Art (New York City), the Nasher Sculpture Center (Dallas, Texas), the National Gallery of Scotland (Edinburgh), the Peggy Guggenheim Collection (Venice), the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pompidou Center (Paris), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York City), and the Tate Gallery (London) are among the public collections holding work by Julio González. The biggest collection of this artist's work is held by the IVAM (Valencia's Institute of Modern Art), in the city of Valencia, Spain, with close to 400 pieces.