L'ANNUNCIATA

GALLERIA D'ARTE IN MILANO, VIA MANZONI 46 - TELEFONO 791.102

DIRETTA DA BRUNO GROSSETTI

Dal 30 Ottobre al 20 Novembre 1958

Nuova serie 38

IN GALLERIA

Mario Tozzi

NEL SALONE

Raymond Georgein

Tozzi - Il Circo

MARIO
TOZZI

BOLLETTINO
DELL'ANNUNCIATA

38 / Sommario

Eugenio D'Ors: Mario Tozzi

René Huyghe: L'amour de l'art

*: Valori

M. F.: Piccola enciclopedia dell'arte · Daniele Ranzoni

*: Il grande momento della scultura

Nelle grandi età barocche — VI e III Secolo a. C., l'Impero Romano nell'epoca della decadenza, l'Anno Mille, l'era francescana, la sagra del « rococò » *fin de siècle* — i desideri più nascosti, le concupiscenze più segrete degli uomini gravitano infallibilmente verso la Purezza: essi la sognano come un paradiso perduto... Per noi, al contrario, il vero perduto paradiso è l'Intelligenza. Eccoci infatti, nostalgici seguaci della Ragione, donare fervori deliziosamente furtivi e riceverne in cambio — per la sua legge di ordine, di salute, di verità, di equilibrio, di geometria, di architetura — piaceri semi-clandestini.

Elogiamo il pittore Mario Tozzi per essere egli il « nostro » pittore. Ammiriamolo per la abilità con cui sa trarre suoni dallo strumento possente e volutamente soffocato dove cantano quei sentimenti a proposito dei quali ci piace dire — rivincita contro Pascal — che « anche la Ragione ha i suoi stati emotivi dove il Cuore non batte più ».

Del nostro vero paradiso perduto, Mario Tozzi ci offre un prestigioso miraggio... Miraggio? Lo spirito vigila là dove i sensi godono di una così regale ebbrezza. E — nella scia di Ulisse: l'orecchio avido di dolceze, il corpo saldamente legato all'albero della nave — per non restare vittima del suo fascino, egli si sforza di definirlo, di rinchiuderlo ad ogni istante nei confini di un piccolo cosmo fittizio, inserito o sottomesso ad un altro, o persino nel cuore stesso del caos: non soltanto — così come fanno, più o meno consciamente, tutti i pittori — per mezzo della cornice che delimita la totalità del dipinto, ma altresì con l'introduzione e la giustapposizione di certi artifici figurativi: larga e vaga cartella spalancata i cui bordi tendono ancora a rilevarsi, o grande specchio a mano che offre ad un angolo del mondo l'immagine di un altro mondo, la lucidità ipercosciente e l'angelico incanto di un lontano Eden — presente, ad onta di tutto.

Eugenio D'Ors
dell'Accademia di Spagna

Tozzi - Oggetti dinanzi al mare

salone
annunciata

Retour

grattacieli rispondono alle immagini che pos-
siamo vedere in uno specchio deformante o
da un immaginario aereoplano in volo: perfino
i suoi titoli hanno un particolare sapore evoca-
tivo. Salde forme geometriche sono i primi
elementi che compongono questi quadri, ai
quali si aggiunge, con ritmica progressione,
un colore che ne accentua l'essenza dramma-
tica. L'equilibrio delle forme e dei toni è man-
tenuto: l'opera, pur sfiorando l'astrazione, rag-
giunge una sua propria integrale armonia ed
una omogeneità di colori limpidi e calmi.

Daniele
Ranzoni

A Intra è incominciata e si è conclusa la ma-
linconica avventura umana di Daniele Ran-
zoni: ed è proprio questo ambiente, non avaro
di sollecitudini e di affetti ma irrimediabil-
mente mediocre e provinciale, che fa da sfon-
do segreto ai quadri dell'infelice pittore, certo
tra i più significativi del nostro Ottocento.
Sfondo segreto, dicevamo, pensando partico-
larmente ai ritratti, a quella splendida galleria
di figure muliebri (dall'accademica Beatrice
Cenci del 1863 alla signorina Torrazzi del
1889) che sembrano librate in un'atmosfera
coloristica libera da ogni riferimento esterno
e che invece risentono fortemente dell'origine
e delle esperienze del Ranzoni. Non solo, ma
è proprio a questa nascita paesana, al periodi-
co ritornare del pittore in riva al Verbano a
contatto con la sua gente salda e sobria, che si
deve con ogni probabilità il senso della ri-
cerca espressiva condotta dal Ranzoni e che
ne ha definito in maniera inequivocabile la
personalità. Antiaccademico, romantico senza
esteriorità, di animo delicato e sensibile, egli
ha saputo evitare la pittura di orpelli, che da
tante parti vedeva praticata ed esaltata, e la
pittura dispersiva e fantastica di un Cremona,
giungendo a definire un linguaggio suo pro-
prio, di forza singolare.

Daniele Ranzoni, nato nel 1849 sulle sponde
del Lago Maggiore, era di umile famiglia e
sembrava gli fosse stato riservato dal destino
un posto di lavoro come ciabattino al desco
di suo padre. Modesto e riservato, il ragazzo
seppe invece far notare la sua predisposizione
non comune al disegno ed alla pittura fre-
quentando le lezioni di un maestro locale, il
quale propose ben presto di mandare il bravo

piccola enciclopedia dell'arte

In questa rubrica presenteremo di volta in vol-
ta le più significative esperienze artistiche dei
tempi moderni, tenendo conto delle risultanze della
critica, si da dare di ogni singola voce una do-
cumentazione allo stesso tempo precisa ed esau-
riente, pronta da consultare in ogni occasione.

allievo a studiare a Milano. Nel 1856 Ranzoni
giungeva a Brera, intimidito, ma attento a che
niente gli sfuggisse di ciò che poteva essergli
utile per il suo tirocinio di artista. A Milano
rimase un solo anno, essendogli stata asse-
gnata una borsa di studio della provincia di
Novara per l'Accademia Albertina di Torino.
I più saldi fondamenti del suo mestiere di
pittore il Ranzoni li ebbe qui, nei cinque anni
di studio del disegno che vi compì, di tanto
in tanto interrotti da brevi soggiorni nella
natia Intra per ristabilirsi in salute. E non
solo un affinamento della tecnica egli rag-
giunse negli anni torinesi, ma anche uno schiet-

Ritratto della signora Luvoni

I Pizzoni sul Lago Maggiore visti dalla Villa Ada

to gusto delle cose viste con semplicità, con naturalezza ed amore, secondo l'esempio illustrare di Fontanesi che gli fu in tal senso maestro.

Dopo una crisi che lo costrinse a stare inativo ad Intra per circa un anno, Ranzoni tornò nel 1863 a Milano, dove ritrovò gli amici con i quali aveva incominciato la sua vita scolastica. Qui non tardò molto a far trasecolare Bertini, il suo maestro, e gli altri allievi presentando come saggio una « Beatrice Cenci che scioglie i capelli al sole ». tutta trascorrante di luci, cangiante di toni come se davvero il sole fosse stato dietro alla tela a portarvi di ora in ora le sue note gioiose o malinconiche. Già in questo quadro Ranzoni ritelò la sua tendenza a lavorare sui dati essenziali di una figura o di un diverso tema, trascurando ogni dettaglio, ogni cornice decorativa: la sua Beatrice era là, sola, con tutta l'imponenza della persona, al centro del quadro, in una massa fluente di capelli. Nel quadro non c'era altro.

Nel 1865 Ranzoni, conclusi gli studi, tornò a Intra: ma ben poche risorse potevano esserci in un piccolo paese per lui. Si ridusse a dipingere qualche mal remunerata lunetta in piccole chiese parrocchiali o addirittura modestissime insegne di negozi o di stalli. Era, oltre che la miseria, l'insoddisfazione più ne-

ra: come e soprattutto per chi esprimere quella ricchezza di idee che egli sentiva maturare in sè? Una tremenda alluvione che aggravò ancora di più le condizioni di vita ad Intra e nelle altre località rivierasche decise finalmente Ranzoni a tornare a Milano, ma non con l'intenzione di fare il pittore, bensì per indossare la divisa e fare il soldato. Fu l'amico Cremona che, conosciute le sue intenzioni, seppe dissuaderlo e, offertagli l'ospitalità più sincera nel suo studio, lo introduse nel mondo degli artisti e dei mecenati milanesi che egli così bene conosceva. Cominciarono così gli anni migliori del Ranzoni, quelli in cui seppe esprimere pienamente se stesso.

Era il 1870: la vita artistica a Milano era fiorente, la Scapigliatura stava portando alle estreme conseguenze la rivolta contro ilfredo e rettorico classicismo e nello stesso tempo mitigava gli slanci romantici e scenografici dell'Hayez in una più trepida visione della realtà, in un racconto più dimesso e intimista in cui i buoni borghesi potessero riconoscere se stessi. In questo rinnovamento, in questa lotta contro gli « eroi » in favore degli « uomini », Ranzoni fu subito uno dei primi: i suoi ritratti, che egli cominciava ad eseguire nelle famiglie più note del tempo, erano saldamente coordinati nei loro elementi come per una indagine e non certo per una cele-

brazione. La spontaneità, l'affiorare in superficie anche dei pensieri più riposti, un senso come di mestizia signorilmente rattenuto, un casto uso dei colori sempre smorzati su toni uniformi senza scoppi violenti, distinguono i suoi ritratti più importanti e nello stesso tempo rispecchiano vivacemente la personalità inquieta e fondamentalmente triste del Ranzoni. La Principessa Troubetzkoy, la Contessa Arrivabene, la signora Confalonieri, la signora Luvoni e ancora Il Garibaldino Erba, La principessa Ada col figlio Gigi sono opere assai significative, nate da una stessa felice ispirazione, senza effusioni e senza sdolcinature. I ritratti rispecchiano al di là delle persone e delle loro psicologie individuali, una condizione umana in cui nobiltà di atteggiamenti e di pensieri e chiarezza di idee si rivelano in una luce obbiettiva, in una inequivoca saldezza di forme. E' il mondo paesano del Ranzoni che è presente e determina questo equilibrio, questo incontro di due sensibilità e di due esperienze diverse, senza che una rineghi l'altra.

Ranzoni entrò in particolare dimestichezza con la famiglia Troubetzkoy che aveva una villa proprio ad Intra nella quale spesso si raccoglievano artisti e scrittori: in questo angolo di paradiso anche il Ranzoni trascorse lunghi periodi fecondi di lavoro, quando le condizioni di salute gli consigliavano di l Sciare Milano e di cercare un clima più mite. Restano tra le più belle testimonianze di queste felici parentesi della sua esistenza, i « Pizzoni visti dalla Villa Ada sul Lago Maggiore » (in cui il paesaggio tanto caro all'artista trova una libertà di trascrizioni e di accenti da farne una anticipazione eccezionale di modi ed esperienze che giungeranno fino a Tosi) e il Ritratto dei ragazzi Troubetzkoy.

Proprio nella villa dei principi mecenati, Ranzoni conobbe i signori Medlycott, che lo invitarono a seguirli a Londra. Dopo molte esitazioni, nel '77 egli partì per la capitale inglese: la città gli fece subito un'impressione penosa (« orrenda, sozza, case nere, vie famose, dense nebbie... »), ma annegò la malinconia nel copioso lavoro che gli venne com-

missionato e che gli procurò finalmente cospi cui guadagni. Due anni più tardi però egli ritornò precipitosamente in patria, amareggiato e con i nervi in pezzi, a causa di un imprevedibile rifiuto dei suoi quadri all'Esposizione annuale della Royal Academy. A Intra, pur fra inframmettenti crisi, cominciò lenta mente a ristabilirsi: volle allora tornare a Milano, ma non trovò più gli amici più cari (Cremona era morto l'anno precedente, nel 1878) e si sentì come disperso tra gente che non lo amava e non lo capiva. Eseguì ancora qualche ritratto (La Contessa Arrivabene, la signora Luvoni, la signora Pisani Dossi) ri-chiamandosi volutamente all'esperienza cremoniana, quasi volesse ritrovare in tal modo il caro amico perduto, rientrare in colloquio con lui. Dopo qualche tempo ritornò alla sua Intra, ma fu qui che il destino gli riserbò il colpo più duro, quello da cui non si sarebbe risollevato più. Ranzoni incontrò una signorina milanese, se ne innamorò e ne fu contraccambiato. Questo fiorire di sentimenti sembrò

Ritratto della principessa di St. Léger

Premettiamo che questa nota ha, per noi, un
valore puramente mnemonico, per suggerire
un tema da studiare con ben altra ampiezza
ed approfondimento. Abbiamo la netta im-
pressione che la scultura stia attraversando
un periodo particolarmente felice e che si va-
da delineando, con forza crescente, nella plu-
ralità ed individualità delle varie e più si-

Daniele Ranzoni (segue)

finalmente l'antidoto a tante amarezze del-
l'artista, ma d'improvviso tutto crollò: il tu-
tore della ragazza impedì le nozze ed essa se
ne andò da Intra per sempre. Il pittore pre-
cipitò in una sua nera follia: non pensò ad
altro che al suo amore, non fece che attendere
il ritorno dell'innamorata sostanto ore ed ore,
solitario, sull'imbarcadero. Nei pochi sprazzi
di lucidità dipinse ancora, ma spesso non por-
tò a compimento ciò che aveva incominciato:
fanno eccezione il Ritratto della signora Spi-
nelli, il Ritratto della principessa di Saint
Léger e il Ritratto della signorina Torrazzi,
splendida e severa figura dipinta poco prima
di morire. Lo uccise il suo sogno impossi-
bile: un'altra delle sue eterne attese della don-
na amata in riva al lago, sotto la pioggia, nel-
l'ottobre 1889.

M. F.

Nei numeri precedenti (indicati tra parentesi) sono stati pubblicati i profili critici di Raoul Dufy (5), Gino Rossi (6), Medardo Rosso (7), Auguste Renoir (8), Il Piccio (9), Amedeo Modigliani (10), Paul Gauguin (11), Silvestro Lega (12) Vincent Van Gogh (13), Giuseppe De Nittis (15), Edgar Degas (16), Auguste Rodin (19), Antonio Fontanesi (20), Paul Cézanne (21), Umberto Boccioni (22), Giovanni Segantini (23), Eugène Delacroix (24), Giovanni Fattori (25), Camille Pissarro (26), Tranquillo Cremona (27), Edouard Manet (28), Scipione (29), Camille Coret (31), Federico Zandone-neghi (33), Henri Rousseau (35), Alfred Sisley (37)

gnificative esperienze, un linguaggio moderno
singolarmente persuasivo.

Ci sono dei fatti che confermano questa im-
pressione: primo, l'affermarsi di artisti gio-
vani in numero rilevante e con fisionomia
ed una sensibilità propria; secondo, l'esem-
plare svolgimento di premesse non più recenti
nell'evoluzione di artisti già famosi; terzo, la
rivalutazione della materia come soggetto au-
tonomo e non come pretesto della forma.

Fenomeni come la nuova « iron age » in Gran
Bretagna, la rivalutazione sul piano della ri-
cerca delle esperienze primitive di certo ar-
tigianato locale in Spagna, o la stessa fiori-
tura di nuove ricerche plastiche in Italia (mai
— ci risulta — gli scultori nostri sono stati
rappresentati così degnamente come alla
29ª Biennale di Venezia) sono molto interes-
santi ed indicano, quanto meno, che è aperta
una via alle ricerche più libere e più ardite.
Maestri come Arp, come Calder, come Moore,
come Marini, come Lipchitz ecc. non hanno
ancora finito di « sorprenderci », sia pure nel-
l'ambito delle avventure espressive già enun-
ciate da ciascuno. Da ultimo, le infinite sug-
gestioni cui, per primi, gli stessi scultori sog-
giacciono davanti alla materia: non più di-
sprezzata e violentata ad esprimere qualcosa
di completamente avulso da sè, la materia en-
tra come un elemento determinante durante
e alla fine del processo creativo, nell'opera
portata a compimento. Così ai gessi di Al-
berto Viani sembra connaturata la levigatezza
estrema, l'aereo dilatarsi delle forme di que-
sto artista, così nei bronzi di Armitage è
raccolta la forza barbarica del mondo pri-
mitivo che trova una sua nuova espressione.
così nei legni di Fazzini si avverte come il
lento distillarsi di una vita secolare nelle ra-
dici sepolte.

La scultura sta liberandosi sempre più da una
costrizione formalistica accettando e valoriz-
zando i dati concreti che la natura offre: cre-
diamo sia anche per questo che le ricerche
più avanzate in questo campo vengono accolte
con minor diffidenza (anche se non mancano
— evidentemente — le irrisioni) di quella ri-
servata alle analoghe esperienze pittoriche. Gli
scultori hanno insomma scoperto di essere uo-
mini in un mondo ricco e vivo: i giovani pit-
tori troppo spesso da questo mondo cercano
di evadere verso lidi sconosciuti.

GONZALEZ, JULIO(Spanish)
1876-1942

117.

SCULPTURE - Iron
"The Kiss" Unique Piece #929 withers
eail on
1930

16 1/2 x 11 1/2 (Le Baiser) including base

Signed: On back plane, u.l.: "J.Gonzalez, 1930"

Bom in Barcelona- Base

Artist lived in Paris.

Purchased thru Qualtieri di San Lorenzo from the artist Mario Tozzi, in Paris, June 24, 1958. Purchased at same time with Gonzalez's "Woman With Broom" and Prompolini's "Mechanical Venus" for total price of 11,000 francs.

History - Tozzi purchased piece from Gonzalez. Mario Tozzi was a friend of Gonzalez and purchased the two pieces, "The Kiss" and "Woman With Broom" (both now in the Winston collection) between 1930-35. This piece has always remained in Tozzi Collection and no copies have been made from it.

See folder Gonzalez's "Woman With A Broom" for invoice, agreements, and Tozzi's history of pieces.

continued on card 2.

GONZALEZ, JULIO

1876-1942

card 3. 117.

SCULPTURE - Iron

"The Kiss" Unique piece - 1930

"Le Baiser"

PUBLISHED: Catalog Julio Gonzalez, published by Stedelijk Mus. Amsterdam, April-May 1955, No.51.(illus.)

Catalog Julio Gonzalez, published by Palais des Beaux-arts, Brussels, May-June 1955, No.51(illus.)

Catalog Julio Gonzalez, published by Kunsthalle, Berne, July-Aug.1955, No. 51, (Illus.)

Gonzalez, by Leon Degand, Universe Sculpture Series, 381 Park Ave., N.Y.16, N.Y. 1959, No.4.

LA CIMAISE, Paris, June-July, Aug. 1956, "Gonzalez," by R.V.Gindertael, illus. p. 13.

Repro. in "Sculpture of This Century", by M.Seuphor, p.274. Braziller, N.Y., 1960.

(over)

GONZALEZ, JULIO (Spanish)

1876-1942

117.

SCULPTURE - Iron

"The Kiss" Unique Piece - 1930

16 1/2 x 11 1/2 (Le Baiser)

Signed: On back plane, u.l.: "J. Gonzalez, 1930"

Artist lived in Paris.

Purchased thru Qualtieri di San Lorenzo from the artist Mario Tozzi, in Paris, June 24, 1958. Purchased at same time with Gonzalez's "Woman With Broom" and Prompolini's "Mechanical Venus" for total price of 3,100,000 francs.

continued on card 2.

117.

### SCULPTURE - Iron

Artist lived in Paris.

continued on card 2.

GONZALEZ, JULIO
1876-1942

card 2,

117.

### SCULPTURE - Iron

EXHIBITED:

Musee D'Art Moderne de Paris, Feb. 1955.

In retrospective of Gonzalez and following exhibition travelled to Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, April-May 1955.

Brussels, Palais des Beaux-arts, May-June 1955.

Berne, Kunsthalle, July - Aug. 1955.

GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM

N.Y.C., N.Y.

11/16/73 - 2/3/74

"Masters of Modern Sculpture" (Winston-Malbin & Guggenheim Mus.col. exhibit) Guggenheim Mus.,N.Y.C.,Nov.19, 1974-Jan.12, 1975 & extended to Feb.27,'75. Not published.

continued on card 3.

GONZALEZ, JULIO
1876-1942

card 3. 117.

### SCULPTURE - Iron

PUBLISHED:

Catalog Julio Gonzalez, published by Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, April-May 1955, No.51.(illus.)

Catalog Julio Gonzalez, published by Kunsthalle, Berne, July-Aug.1955, No. 51,(Illus.)

Gonzalez, by Leon Degand, Universe Sculpture Series, 381 Park Ave.,N.Y.16,N.Y. 1959,No.4

LA CIMAISE, Paris, June-July,Aug. 1956, "Gonzalez" by R.V.Gindertael,illus.p. 13.

Repro. in "Sculpture of This Century", by M.Seuphor, p.274.Braziller, N.Y., 1960.

(over)

GONZALEZ, JULIO (Spanish)
1876-1942

117.

### SCULPTURE - Iron
"The Kiss" Unique Piece - 1930

16 1/2 x 11 1/2 (Le Baiser)

Artist lived in Paris.

### History - Tozzi purchased piece from Gonzalez. Mario Tozzi was a friend of Gonzalez and purchased the two pieces, "The Kiss" and "Woman With Broom" (both now in the Winston collection) between 1930-35. This piece has always remained in Tozzi Collection and no copies have been made from it.

continued on card 2.

card 2.

117.

GONZALEZ, JULIO
1876-1942

### SCULPTURE - Iron
"The Kiss" Unique piece - 1930

"Le Baiser"

GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM

N.Y.C., N.Y.

11/16/73 - 2/3/74

"Masters of Modern Sculpture" (Winston-Malbin & Guggenheim Mus.col. exhibit) Guggenheim Mus., N.Y.C., Nov.19, 1974-Jan.12, 1975 & extended to Feb.27, '75. Not published.

continued on card 3.

GONZALEZ, JULIO
1876-1942

card 3. 117.

### SCULPTURE - Iron

"Le Baiser"

PUBLISHED:

Catalog Julio Gonzalez, published by Kunsthalle, Berne, July-Aug.1955, No.51,(illus.)

LA CIMAISE, Paris, June-July, Aug. 1956, "Gonzalez," by R.V. Gindertael, illus. p. 13.

### Repro. in "Sculpture of This Century", by M. Seuphor, p.274. Braziller, N.Y., 1960.

(over)

117.

Artist lived in Paris.

continued on card 2.

GONZALEZ, JULIO
1876-1942

card 2.

117.

EXHIBITED:

GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM
N.Y.C., N.Y.

11/16/73 - 2/3/74

continued on card 3.

GONZALEZ, JULIO
1876-1942

SCULPTURE - Iron

"Le Baiser"

PUBLISHED:

Catalog Julio Gonzalez, published by Kunsthalle, Berne, July-Aug.1955, No. 51,(illus.)

Rebro. in "Sculpture of This Century", by M. Seuphor, p.274. Braziller, N.Y., 1960.

(over)

card 3. 117.

GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM

October 1, 1981

Mrs. Lydia Winston Malbin
980 5th Avenue
Apt. 15B
New York, N.Y. 10021

Dear Lydia Malbin,

I have been trying to reach you for a couple of days without success. There are a few things I would like to discuss with you informally and I wonder if we could get together some afternoon some time soon. So that it doesn't sound mysterious, I would like to talk to you a bit
a) about your and your father's relationship to Frank Lloyd Wright;
b) about your father's experiences in The Soviet Union (I know he built there, didn't he?); c) about a Julio Gonzalez exhibition we are preparing for The Guggenheim.

Will you call me some morning at the Museum at your convenience (direct line: 860-1319)? It will be nice to see you again.

MR/pv

THE SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM 1071 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK CITY 10028 TELEPHONE (212) 860-1300 TELEX 224557

AKADEMIE DER KÜNSTE

Mrs. Lydia Winston-Malbin
980 Fifth Avenue

NEW YORK, N.Y. 10021

U S A

Abteilung Bildende Kunst
Hanseatenweg 10
1000 Berlin 21
Telefon (030) 391 10 31

February 21, 1982

Dear Mrs. Winston-Malbin,

I am preparing the catalogue raisonné of the sculptural work by the Spanish artist Julio Gonzalez. I have nearly finished my researches and the book shall be published still in this fall.

As I have learned by Margit Rowell whom I met recently in Paris, where we worked together on the Gonzalez-retrospective previewed for the Guggenheim Museum as well as for the Akademie der Künste, there are two unique iron sculptures in your collection, i.e.

LE BAISER 1930

FEMME AU BALAI 1930.

Beside the precise information Margit Rowell published on "Le Baiser" in her Guggenheim-catalogue "The planar dimension" I certainly know as well the coordinates on "Femme au balai" given by Josephine Withers in her book "Julio Gonzalez - Sculpture in Iron".

But I have some more questions. Concerning "Femme au balai", Withers is giving only the hight, not the other dimensions. Would you please so kind to write me the depth and the width? Concerning the material of "Femme au balai", I am sure that Withers is right giving "iron". In some older files and exhibition catalogues I found never the less sometimes "copper". Could you please confirm that "Femme..." is really an iron sculpture?

Do you have any information about exhibitions where these sculptures have been shown - beside the exhibitions mentioned by Withers and Rowell?

I would be very grateful to you, if you could send me of both sculptures several photographs showing them from different angels, even the back-side or - concerning "Le Baiser" - from the side showing it's flatness. I presumably want to reproduce both sculptures from different points of view to make more evident visually the way of spatial thinking of Gonzalez. For sure, that all costs for the photographs will be on my charge.

I assume that you acquired "Femme au balai" as well from Mario Tozzi. Was it the same year as "Le Baiser"? Did you buy it in Italy, France or did Tozzi live in New York?

February 27, 1982

Mr. Jorn Merkert
Secretary of the Department of Visual Arts
Akademie der Kunste Berlin
Abteilung Bildende Kunst
Hanseatenweg 10
1000 Berlin 21
Federal Republic of West Germany

Dear Mr. Merkert,

Thank you for your letter of February 21 regarding my
two Gonzalez pieces: Le Baiser and Femme au Balai.
I was interested to know that you have worked with Margit
Rowell on the coming Gonzalez retrospective. I have great
regard for Margit Rowell, her scholarship and her insights.

Le Baiser and Femme au Balai are definitely in iron. I
purchased the works in Paris from Mario Tozzi, an Italian
artist living in Paris and a former friend of Gonzalez.

Enclosed are copies of my provenance and records of the two
works giving the information you have asked for: dimensions,
exhibitions etc.

I am sorry not to be able to give you names of other collectors
of Gonzalez in the U.S.A. Unique pieces over here seem to
be quite rare.

Photographs as you requested will be made this week, and I
will send them to you when they are ready.

When the catalogue raisonne is published I wish very much
to obtain one for my art library.

Encl.
LWM/dlc

P.S. The credit line should be as follows: The Winston-Malbin
Collection (Dr. and Mrs. Barnett Malbin, New York).

P.P.S. I have no Gonzalez drawings in my collection.

AKADEMIE DER KÜNSTE

Mrs. Lydia Winston-Malbin
980 Fifth Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10021
U.S.A.

Abteilung Bildende Kunst

February 15, 1983

Dear Mrs. Winston-Malbin,

As you already know, Margit Rowell of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Akademie der Künste, Berlin-West, are preparing together a major retrospective exhibition of the work of the Spanish sculptor JULIO GONZALEZ.

The opening at the Guggenheim will take place at the beginning of March 1983. After the New York closing, the exhibition will travel to the Museo Español de Arte Contemporáneo in Madrid and we shall present it here in Berlin during the Berlin festival weeks in September/October 1983.

We have been informed that you have agreed to give your loans to the New York exhibition only. In view of the fragility of the works, we quite understand that you don't want them to travel during such an extended period.

Nevertheless, for us this project has a special importance due to the fact that for the first time after more than 30 years we shall assemble again most of the original sculptures in iron. Your loans are therefore of invaluable importance to us.

As you also probably know, I am elaborating since some years the catalogue raisonné of Gonzalez' sculptures. I almost finished my researches and I very much hope to be able to present this catalogue raisonné at the opening of the exhibition here in Berlin. The results of these researches have been taken into consideration for the exhibition.

Considering this background we are particularly interested in including your loans in our Berlin exhibition too. We, therefore, would very much appreciate it if you could decide to lend the works you already approved for the Guggenheim again to Berlin.

-2-

Mrs. Lydia Winston-Malbin
New York

February 15, 1983

The exhibition will be shown here from September 4 until
October 23, 1983.

All costs regarding insurance, packing, transportation etc.
will, of course, be assumed by ourselves. We assure you
that your loans will be handled with utmost care and that
every possible precaution will be taken to safeguard the
loans.

We very much hope that you will revise your decision and
that you will give favorable consideration to this request.
We take the liberty to submit you enclosed our prepared
loan form and, hoping on your approval, we kindly ask you
to complete, sign and return us three copies, retaining
the yellow one for your files.

Thanking you in advance and looking forward to a positive
answer, we are,

Very sincerely yours,

(Jörn Merkert)

Secretary of the Dept. of Visual Arts

Encl.

LWM#117

GONZALEZ, Julio (Spanish) 1876-1942

THE KISS, 1930

Iron with stone base

Unique piece

Sculpture: 10½" height
11 1/8" width
3 3/4" depth

Stone

Base: 4 3/4" height
4 3/4" width
4 3/4" depth

Signed on reverse plane of sculpture, u.l.: "J. Gonzalez, 1930"

Artist was born in Barcelona and lived and died in Paris.

Purchased from the artist, Mario Tozzi, in Paris, June 24, 1958. Purchased at the same time with Gonzalez's WOMAN WITH BROOM.

History: Tozzi purchased piece from Gonzalez. Mario Tozzi was a friend of Gonzalez and purchased the two pieces, THE KISS and WOMAN WITH BROOM, between 1930-35. This piece has always remained in Tozzi's Collection and no copies have been made from it.

Exhibited: first exhibited at the Galerie de France, 1930

Gonzalez retrospective

Musee D'Art Moderne de Paris, February 1955

retrospective exhibition travelled to:

Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, April - May 1955.

Brussels, Palais des Beaux-arts, May - June, 1955.

Berne, Kunsthalle, July - August, 1955 (wrong title in cat.)

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

"Futurism, A Modern Focus; The Lydia and Harry

Lewis Winston Collection, Dr. and Mrs. Barnett

Malbin, New York", November 16, 1973 - February 3, 1974.

"Masters of Modern Sculpture" (Winston-Malbin
Collection and Guggenheim Museum collection
exhibition), November 19, 1974 - January 12,
1975, extended to February 27, 1975.

continued on next page

Page two

GONZALEZ, Julio

THE KISS

Exhibited: (Continued)

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
"The Planar Dimension!" Europe 1912-1932"
April, 1979 - May 6, 1979. Curated and
written by Margaret Rowell

Published: Catalogo Julio Gonzalez

published by the Stedelijk Museum
Amsterdam, April - May 1955
No. 51 (illustrated)

Catalogo Julio Gonzalez

published by Palais des Beaux-arts
Brussels, May - June, 1955
No. 51 (illustrated)

Catalogo Julio Gonzalez

published by Kunsthalle, Berne, July - Aug. 1955.
No. 51. (illustrated)

Begand, Leon; "CONZALEZ"

Universe Sculpture Series,
381 Park Avenue, New York, New York, 1959,
No. 4.

LA CIMATSE, Paris, June-July, Aug. 1956

"Gonzalez" by R.V. Cindertael; illustrated
p. 13.

S. Seuphor, Michel; "Sculpture of this Century,"

Braziller, New York, 1960, p.274 (reproduced)

Bowness, Alan, "Modern Sculpture", Dutton Vista,

1965, reproduced on p. 148.

"Futurism: A Modern Focus", The Lydia and Harry

Malbin, New York", The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
November 16, 1973 - February 3, 1974; cat. no. 46,
p. 100; illus, p. 101.

continued on the next page

Page three

GONZALEZ, Julio

THE KISS

Published: (continued)

Withers, Josephine, JULIO GONZALEZ:
SCULPTURE IN IRON, New York, New York
University SRpress, 1978, No. 35; reproduced,
p. 51; also see pages 42, 44, 147 and 159.

Geist, Sidney, "Brancusi, the Kiss, Icon Editions
Harper Robw Publishers, New York, Hagerstown,
San Francisco, London, 1978; pp. 91, reproduced
#65.

"The Planar Dimension: Europe, 1912-1932",
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York,
April, 1979 - May 6, 1979, curated and written
by Marvit Rowell, ref. p. 59 and reproduced on
p. 94.

LYDIA WINSTON MALBIN

980 FIFTH AVENUE

NEW YORK, N. Y. 10021

May 22, 1982

Mr. Jorn Merkert
Secretary of the Department of Visual Arts
Akademie der Kunste Berlin
Abteiling Bildende Kunst
Hanseatenweg 10
1000 Berlin 21
Federal Republic of West Germany

Dear Mr. Merkert,

I wanted to write to inform you that I received your payment for the photographs of the two Gonzalez sculptures, *Le Baiser* and *Femme au Balai* that are in my Collection and that you are including in the catalog raisonné of Julio Gonzalez.

I want to thank you for your prompt attention and consideration.

## TRUSTEES OF THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

John Hoy Whitney, Chairman of the Board; Henry Allen Moe, 1st Vice-Chairman;

Philip L. Goodwin, 2nd Vice-Chairman;

William A. M. Burden, President; Mrs. David M. Levy, 1st Vice-President;

Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss,

Stephen C. Clark, Ralph F. Colin, Mrs. W. Murray Crane,*

René d'Harnoncourt, Mrs. Edsel B. Ford, A. Conger Goodyear,

Mrs. Simon Guggenheim,* Wallace K. Harrison, James W. Husted,*

Mrs. Albert D. Lasker, Mrs. Henry R. Luce, Ranald H. Macdonald,

Mrs. Samuel A. Marx, Mrs. G. Macculloch Miller, William S. Paley,

Mrs. Bliss Parkinson, Mrs. Charles S. Payson, Duncan Phillips,*

Andrew Carnduff Ritchie, David Rockefeller,

Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, 3rd, Nelson A. Rockefeller,

Beardsley Ruml, Paul J. Sachs,* John L. Senior, Jr., James Thrall Soby,

Edward M. M. Warburg, Monroe Wheeler

* Honorary Trustee for Life

## TRUSTEES OF THE MINNEAPOLIS INSTITUTE OF ARTS

Putnam D. McMillan, Chairman of the Board; Bruce B. Dayton, President;

Thomas L. Daniels, Vice-President; Richard P. Gale, Vice-President;

Harold H. Tearse, Vice-President; G. Sidney Houston, Secretary and Treasurer;

James G. Fullerton, Assistant Treasurer;

Charles H. Bell, James F. Bell, Russell H. Bennett, Francis D. Butler,

Leonard G. Carpenter, Benton J. Case, John C. Cornelius,

John Coules, George C. Crosby, Stephen P. Duffy, Robert J. Flanagan,

George H. Halpin, Stanley Hawks, Hadlai A. Hull,

Carl W. Jones, Jack J. Jorgensen, Samuel H. Mason,

Clinton Morrison, H. Terry Morrison, Leo R. Pflaum, George S. Pillsbury,

Philip W. Pillsbury, Harry C. Piper, Harold W. Sweatt,

G. Aaron Youngquist,

Russell A. Plimpton, Director; Richard S. Davis, Assistant Director

## THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART BULLETIN:

Volume XXIII, Numbers 1-2, 1955-1956

Copyright 1956. The Museum of Modern Art, 11 W. 53 Street, New York 19, N.Y.
Printed in the United States of America

Design and Typography by Philip Sykes

Overleaf: Reclining Figure, 1934. See p.30

Picasso. PORTRAIT OF JULIO GONZALEZ, c. 1900-04. Watercolor, 12½ x 9¾". Collection Mme Roberta Gonzalez, Paris

### acknowledgments

This is the first retrospective exhibition in the United States of the sculpture of Julio Gonzalez. The present monograph is the first in English on the artist.

On behalf of the Trustees of the Museum of Modern Art and The Minneapolis Institute of Arts I wish to thank the following for their assistance: the collectors and museums whose generosity in lending has made the exhibition possible and whose names appear on page 46; Robert Giron, W. H. B. Sandberg, Jean Cassou, Henri Marceau; Miss Darthea Speyer for securing information for me in Paris; Mrs. B. Proske for locating articles on Gonzalez; Miss Mary S. Coxe for research, translation of Gonzalez' statements and secretarial work throughout; and Miss Nancy Riegen for preparing the bibliography.

Above all I wish to express my deepest gratitude to Mme Roberta Gonzalez, daughter of the artist, who has lent a majority of the sculptures and drawings in the exhibition and who has been a principal source of information for the facts about her father's life and work.

ANDREW CARNDUFF RITCHIE, Director of the Exhibition

### exhibition dates

The Museum of Modern Art: February 7 — April 8, 1956

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts: May 8 — June 17, 1956

## introduction

George Orwell in his *Homage to Catalonia* writes movingly of the generosity of the Spaniard and particularly of the Catalonian. "If you ask him for a cigarette," Orwell says, "he will force the whole packet upon you. And beyond this there is generosity in a deeper sense, a real largeness of spirit, which I have met with again and again in the most unpromising circumstances." At the same time Orwell comments upon the well-known indecisiveness, the pro-cresting habits of the Spaniard. "In theory," he says, "I rather admire the Spaniards for not sharing our Northern time-neurosis; but unfortunately I share it myself."

One wonders whether an elastic time sense is not somehow related to largeness of spirit. In any case, I am reminded of these Spanish characteristics when thinking of the Catalonian, Julio Gonzalez, who did not find his real role as a sculptor until after he was fifty, but when he did find his way the spirit and grace of his conceptions became quickly manifest.

Since the Middle Ages there have been few sculptors in Spain of international importance. Even such Renaissance masters as Beruguete and Diego de Siloé were heavily in debt to Italian teaching or example. But while Spanish sculpture for many centuries seldom rose above a provincial level, there is one related art in which the Spaniard has always excelled. The Moorish occupation of over eight hundred years left as one of its principal contributions a knowledge and love of decorative metal work, particularly in wrought iron. Much of the magnificence of Spain's church interiors is due to the extraordinary richness and beauty of metal grills, screens and candelabras. It is this tradition which is Gonzalez' inheritance.

Born in Barcelona in 1876, he came from a large artist-family, one principally engaged in the making of decorative metal work—lamps, lanterns, candelabras, floral ornaments in bronze, gilded and nickeled, and in forged and beaten iron. The master craftsman of the workshop was the father Concordio, who was also a sculptor. His sons, Joan and Julio, and his daughters, Pilar and Dolores, all assisted him and eventually exhibited their metal work under his or their own names in the Barcelona Expositions of 1892 (when Julio is said to have won a gold medal), 1894, 1896 and 1898. In 1893 Joan and Julio also exhibited work in the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In the 1896 catalog of the Barcelona Exposition Julio's entry was a "Branch of flowers of forged and beaten iron," which may be taken as typical of his early work.

At some time between 1891 and 1900, Julio is also said to have

Concordio Gonzalez. PORTRAIT OF HIS WIFE PILAR. c. 1875. Plaster. Collection Mme Roberta Gonzalez, Paris.

Top: CONCORDIO GONZALEZ, father of the artist, c. 1893.

4

done some work, along with many other Barcelona artists, on Antonio Gaudí's enormous and fantastic church, the Sagrada Família, which then began building and was never completed. Whether one can claim any direct influence of Gaudí on the young metal worker it is hard to say. It may well be that the extraordinary fantasy of Gaudí's vegetable-like decorations, the perforated ornamentation of, for example, the spires and finials of the Sagrada Família, left an impression on young Julio which bore similar fruit in the constructions in space of his maturity.*

Barcelona in the 1890s was the industrial, intellectual and artistic center of Spain. Probably in reaction to the cultural ferment of these years and also to the dominant position of father Concordio in the family workshop, Joan and Julio sought to elevate themselves from their craft status by studying in the evenings at the Barcelona School of Fine Arts. Julio was particularly attracted to painting, as was Joan. In Barcelona Joan became a friend of Picasso, who although younger than either of the Gonzalez brothers had already in the late '90s begun to make himself known as a painter. Perhaps following Picasso's example, and that of a number of young Barcelona artists, the two brothers went to Paris about 1900. There Joan renewed his acquaintance with Picasso and introduced him to Julio. The brothers also associated themselves with his friends, the poet Max Jacob, the critic Maurice Raynal, the sculptor Manolo and presumably other members of the Spanish colony, such as the sculptor Pablo Gargallo and the painter Zuloaga.

Julio was an extremely shy and retiring individual. As a consequence, he depended a great deal on the companionship of his more outgoing older brother. And when Joan died in 1908, Julio was inconsolable for many months. He gave up working for a time and abandoned all his friends, with the exception of Picasso and Brancusi, whom he had also come to know.

Previous to Joan's death, Julio had concentrated on painting, which shows the alternating influence of Puvis de Chavannes and Degas. After 1908, when he had recovered somewhat from the loss of his brother, he seems to have painted less and returned instead to metal work, mostly portrait masks and heads, hammered in bronze and silver. But what can only be described as a profound melancholia continued to affect him for many years. "Now began for my father," his daughter Roberta has said, "those long years of study, in a solitude that always increased. These eighteen years from 1908 to 1926 were without doubt the most dramatic of his

* Gonzalez' work for Gaudí is recalled by José de Creeft, the Spanish-American sculptor, who knew Gonzalez.

JOAN GONZALEZ, c.1895.

5

life up to that time. Practical difficulties, mental anguish, above all artistic anguish, the bitter fight with himself over the search for his true personality, were certainly the most depressing things he had to overcome. It was only towards his fiftieth year that Gonzalez, at last, foresaw dimly his true path."*

His "true path" proved to be sculpture. During all the years of indecision he appears not to have been willing to admit finally that as a painter he was not particularly gifted and that his unique strength lay in his ability to cut and shape all kinds of metal. He had now only sixteen more years to live and his last two years, from 1940 to 1942, were interrupted by the crisis of war and he was forced to leave a number of sculptures unfinished. In effect, then, his major production as an artist was accomplished in about fourteen years. While he was not prolific, the range and increasing intensity of his work, in such a short time, are remarkable.

From about 1926 to 1930 his sculpture is quite diverse in character and usually on a small scale. Some of the pieces are cubistic, in a decorative sense, for example, *The Couple*, page 9. More ambitious are the *Harlequin* of 1929, page 10, which may owe something to Lipchitz' "transparencies" of 1926 and later, and the *Don Quixote*, page 10, which is reminiscent of Gargallo's mannered cubism of this time. In the late '20s also he continued to make masks (page 12), some frankly Negro in origin, one purporting to be Japanese, others cubist, and a series of reclining heads, continuing into the '30s (pages 13-15), whose prototype is Brancusi's *Sleeping Muse* of 1909-10. Side by side with these more "modern" experiments Gonzalez executed a series of small figures and masks which in their flat, curvilinear decorativeness can perhaps best be described as *art nouveau moderne* with a cubist accent (page 11).

About 1931 a profound change takes place. The previous few years, one feels, were halting and uncertain in their stylistic waywardness. From 1931 to about 1936 Gonzalez' sculpture becomes increasingly linear and near-abstract, always, however, with reference to the human figure. Surely there can be only one explanation for this new direction—Picasso. Between 1930 and 1932 Gonzalez assisted Picasso in the making of a number of iron constructions. From this collaboration one can only conclude that the greatest inventor of imagery in the twentieth century transmitted a new vision to his old friend and technical advisor. Nevertheless, I think it is indisputable that certain of these Picasso constructions bear the stamp of more than the technical hand of Gonzalez. Some have

THE FOOT BATII. c.1900-05. Oil on cardboard, 16½ x 42¼". Collection Mme Roberta Gonzalez, Paris.

Joon Gonzalez. CATALONIAN LANDSCAPE. c.1900. Gouache. Collection Mme Roberta Gonzalez, Paris.

* From a radio talk, Paris, November, 1950.

6

a surface finish and elegance of contour, a lyrical decorativeness, that one associates with Gonzalez. Others have a rude, amateur-blacksmith look that better expresses the primitive, fetish-like imagery of Picasso.*

When one turns to Gonzalez' own constructions of the early '30s the lightness and elegance of his drawings in space are clearly distinguishable from the baroque exuberance of Picasso's line and forms. Gonzalez has said: "To project and design in space with the help of new methods, to utilize this space, and to construct with it, as though one were dealing with a newly acquired material —that is all I attempt." (See bibl. 5) Beginning with *The Dream*, page 16, of 1931 (which may still owe something to Picasso), he seeks obviously by increasingly abstract means to purify and thus to clarify his spatial concepts. The *Woman Combing Her Hair* of 1931 (page 17), the *Woman with a Basket* (page 18), a large and a small *Standing Figure* (page 19), and *Maternity* (page 21) are major steps in this development, where space itself becomes a positive medium of expression. The subtle play of angle and curve is the abstract definition of concrete space. All four of these constructions have an almost classic serenity in their linear balance and poised grace. In other constructions of the early '30s, *The Prayer, Dancer with Disheveled Hair, The Angel and Dancer called "à la Palette,"* pages 20, 22, 23, there is an added note of gaiety that reveals an important facet of Gonzalez' otherwise shy, retiring nature.

Together with these primarily linear constructions Gonzalez also made a number in welded sheet iron in which, by an interplay of angular or circular shapes, he cuts and circumscribes space in most complex ways (*Head called "the Swiss Woman,"* page 24, and *Head called "the Big Trumpet,"* page 25). What intricate and often humorous variations he plays upon this head theme! And in still another set of variations he explores the relationships of cylinder, cone and triangle with witty results (*Face called "the Tunnel," *The Lovers*, and two simply titled *Head*, pages 26-27).

About 1934 (if the present dating of his work is approximately accurate) Gonzalez begins to extend further the spatial complexity of his sculpture by employing three-dimensional forms as a foil to the rod and thin sheet elements of the earlier constructions. The beginnings of this new approach can be seen in the *Figure called "the Giraße,"* page 28, where the body of the animal has been filled in with a mass of iron scraps loosely welded together, leaving open-

* See D. H. Kahnweiler: *Les Sculptures de Picasso*, pl. 15 and compare pls. 27, 28 with 29, 30.

JULIO GONZALEZ, c.1912-14.

JULIO GONZALEZ, 1937.

7

ings for light to penetrate. In the *Head*, page 29, a similar semi-
transparent circular mass of fragments is set off against a tubular,
crescent-shaped form which terminates in a linear stylization of
hair and teeth. In the *Head with a Mirror*, page 29, the neck and
mirror are solid pyramidal and disk forms and the head and hair
are again linear and space-defining accompaniments.

The next stage of this play of mass, line and space combines hollow volumes of sheet iron with plate and rod shapes. In these particular constructions, I think, Gonzalez reached the peak of his formal and spatial invention. The sinuous, melodic *Reclining Figure* (page 30), the small *Elongated Figure* (page 30), the more severely abstract variants of *Seated Woman* (pages 32-33), the integration of angular and curved motifs in the *Woman with a Mirror* (page 34) and the counterpoint of line and mass in the *Woman Combing Her Hair* (page 35), all remind one of Gonzalez' passion for music. Beethoven and Mozart he loved, and above all Palestrina and Vittoria. He collected many music scores and sang and accompanied himself on the mandolin. Perhaps Gonzalez' constructions in iron are related in an intimate way to the curving shapes and hollow construction of the violin, the guitar and the mandolin (abstractions themselves of the human body). Even the patina of the metal reminds one of the polished texture of stringed instruments, long handled and rubbed.

While Gonzalez continued to produce near-abstract sculpture until the end of the '30s when he did his grimly humorous *Cactus Man I* and *Cactus Man II*, both on page 37, he never gave up working in a naturalistic manner. Witness his *Head of the Little Montserrat*, the small silver *Standing Peasant Woman*, the *Little Egyptian Torso* and the larger *Torso*, page 38. All of these relatively small pieces are in a way preparations for one of Gonzalez' masterworks—the life-size figure of *The Montserrat*, 1936-37, page 39. Named after the holy mountain of Catalonia, this peasant woman with a sickle in her hand and a child on her arm, Egyptian in formal simplicity, Gothic in sentiment, is Gonzalez' answer, as was Picasso's *Guernica*, to the desperate agonies of the Spanish civil war. Both were exhibited in the Spanish Pavilion of the 1937 Paris Exposition. In *The Montserrat* all the prettiness of the earlier *Head of the Little Montserrat* is gone and in its place there is a heroic quality of feeling—violence under restraint. The *Mask of the Crying Montserrat*, page 40, also of 1936, is more obviously tragic in expression, reminding one a little of the head of Rude's *La Marseillaise* on the Arc de Triomphe. Gonzalez' mask has none of the fantastic distortions of the crying heads in Picasso's *Guernica*

WOMAN, CHILD, THE SEA. c.1900-
05. Oil on cardboard, 21¾ x 15¾". Col-
lection Mme Roberta Gonzalez, Paris.

Below: INCLINED ANCIENT
HEAD. 1910-14. Bronze, 10⅝". Collec-
tion Hans Hartung, Paris.

8

although they must be considered together as symbols of the pain
and anguish of war. And it is actually to this same symbol that
Gonzalez returns at the end of his life, during the opening years of
World War II. By then, however, for want of oxygen and acetylene
he could no longer weld his favorite iron and had to resort to draw-
ings or to modeling in plaster. In this medium he left an unfinished
figure of a kneeling woman, screaming in agony, only the head of
which, so far as I know, has been cast (*Head of the Montserrat II*,
page 41). The numerous drawings of these last years are either
related to this final *Montserrat*, pages 40-41, or represent a prolific
stream of ideas for metal constructions which Gonzalez was never
to execute, pages 42-44.

One cannot begin to estimate the influence of his space-describing
metal sculpture on younger sculptors of today, both in Europe and
America. The debt of such English sculptors as Butler, Chadwick
and Thornton is obvious. The Italian Lardera, the German Uhl-
mann, the Dane Jacobsen, to mention only a few, have all looked
consciously or unconsciously to him for inspiration. And in America,
the preoccupation of such sculptors as Smith, Roszak, Ferber,
Hare, Lippold and Lipton with welded metal as a medium and the
exploitation of space as a positive attribute of their sculpture is
surely the result of Gonzalez' pioneering art.

What a debt twentieth-century art owes to Spain: the protean
imagination of Picasso; the refinement and intellectual probity of
Gris; the humor and fantasy of Miro; the dignity, the largeness
and the gentleness of spirit of Gonzalez.

A. C. R.

THE COUPLE. 1927-29. Iron, 3⅜ x
7¾". Galerie Denise René, Paris.

9

statements by gonzalez

The age of iron began many centuries ago by producing very beautiful objects, unfortunately for a large part, arms. Today, it provides as well, bridges and railroads. It is time this metal ceased to be a murderer and the simple instrument of a super-mechanical science. Today the door is wide open for this material to be, at last, forged and hammered by the peaceful hands of an artist.

Only a cathedral spire can show us a point in the sky where our soul is suspended!

In the disquietude of the night the stars seem to show to us points of hope in the sky; this immobile spire also indicates to us an endless number of them. It is these points in the infinite which are precursors of the new art: 'To draw in space.'

The important problem to solve here is not only to wish to make a work which is harmonious and perfectly balanced—No! But to get this result by the marriage of *material* and *space*. By the union of real forms with imaginary forms, obtained and suggested by established points, or by perforation—and, according to the natural law of love, to mingle them and make them inseparable, one from another, as are the body and the spirit. See *bibl. 37*.

To project and design in space with the help of new methods, to utilize this space, and to construct with it, as though one were dealing with a newly acquired material—that is all I attempt.

The synthetic deformities of material forms, of color, of light; the perforations, the absence of compact planes, give the work a mysterious, fantastic, indeed diabolical aspect. The artist, in the very process of transposing the forms of nature, in breathing new life into them, collaborates at the same time with the space which ennobles them. See *bibl. 5*

FIGURE WITH A CUP. 1941. Crayon and wash, 8¼ x 5⅝". Collection Mme Roberta Gonzalez, Paris.

42

### reply to a question on contemporary art

The masses attach themselves to that art which responds to their needs.

Those of the Middle Ages saw cathedrals, those of our day see collectivist constructions embellished with decorations of an abstract tendency.

The true artists are of their time. It cannot be otherwise since, if it is true that the age creates its artists, it is because the artists have determined the age.

Spiritually, el Greco was of his time and of his country. Did his era understand him? Why did he sink into oblivion over the centuries? And why did he reappear in France as the most modern master, of the purest plasticity, of our school of painting?

In his Ninth Symphony, Beethoven wanted to create music for all. Did he succeed? Does the public love this music more than the other symphonies? Does the public understand it better than the Fifth, which was not created for it?

Did not Beethoven himself, in the finale of his Ninth, lose some of his genius because of having tried to bend it to popular taste?

Why demand everything of the artist? Why not also demand of the spectators that each one, according to his capabilities, try to elevate himself to the work of art? If they don't succeed at the first try, let them persist, even several times. I have often done this.

If one generation has not completely succeeded in its efforts, the following generation may succeed.

Whether the public understands or not, the artist must surrender nothing to the public. Besides, why must one understand? Does one understand nature? Nevertheless, the masses often fall in admiration before it.

The pretty in art produces the trinket.

If one makes out a program for oneself or allows a program to be imposed, the spirit is no longer kept alert. See *bibl. 1*.

### picasso as sculptor

It gives me great pleasure to speak of Picasso as a sculptor. I have always considered him a "man of form," because by nature he has the spirit of form. Form is in his early paintings and in his most recent.

In 1908, at the time of his first cubist paintings, Picasso gave us form not as a silhouette, not as a projection of the object, but by

L'ELAN. 1941. Pen and wash, 14½ x 11". Collection Mme Roberta Gonzalez, Paris.

ABSTRACT FIGURE. 1941. Watercolor and crayon, 10¾ x 7". Collection Mme Roberta Gonzalez, Paris.

43

putting planes, syntheses, and the cube of these in relief, as in a
"construction."

With these paintings, Picasso told me, it is only necessary to cut them out—the colors are only the indications of different perspectives, of planes inclined from one side or the other—then assemble them according to the indications given by the color, in order to find oneself in the presence of a "Sculpture." The vanished painting would hardly be missed. He was so convinced of it that he executed several sculptures with perfect success.

Picasso must have felt himself to be of a true sculptor's tempera-
ment, because in recalling this period of his life to me, he said: "I
have never been so content" or "I was so happy."

Later, in 1931, at the time when he was working on the sculpture
—*Monument to Apollinaire*—, I often heard him repeat "I feel my-
self once more as happy as I was in 1908."

I have observed many times that there is no form which leaves
him indifferent. He looks at everything, on all sides, because all
forms represent something to him; and he sees everything as
sculpture.

Again, recently, having gathered some sticks of white wood in
his studio, he carved the beautiful sculptures published here with
his little pen-knife (retaining the planes and dimensions of each
piece, each one of them suggesting a different figure to him), which
will undoubtedly arouse a great deal of interest.

To my mind, the mysterious side, the nerve center, so to speak,
of the work of Picasso, is in his formal power. It is this power which
has caused so much talk of his work, which has gained so much
glory for him. See *bibl. 3*.

FIGURE OF TERROR II. 1941. Pen and wash, 12½ x 9½". Collection Mme Roberta Gonzalez, Paris.

44

brief chronology

1876 Born September 21 in Barcelona. Father a goldsmith and sculptor, from whom Gonzalez learns the craft of metal work.

1892-98 Exhibits metal work in the Barcelona International Expositions, and in the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. Studies painting evenings in the Barcelona School of Fine Arts.

1900 About this date moves with his artist brother Joan to Paris where he meets Picasso, who becomes his lifelong friend. Devotes himself chiefly to painting.

1908 Death of his brother Joan. His loss deeply felt; Gonzalez isolates himself from most of his friends, except Picasso and Brancusi. Unable to work for a long period.

1910 Resumes work and makes a tentative return to sculpture. For many years hereafter he suffers from self-doubt, uncertain whether to continue as a painter or as a sculptor.

1926 About this year his decision made to concentrate on sculpture.

1930-32 Gives Picasso technical assistance on welded iron constructions. At this time his own maturity as a sculptor is reached. Much of his sculpture takes on a near-abstract quality. Becomes a member of constructivist group Cercle et Carré (Circle and Square), organized in 1930 by the Uruguayan painter Juan Torrès-García, who had gone to Barcelona at 17 and later settled in Paris.

1931 Exhibits Galerie "le Centaure," Brussels.

1934 Exhibits Galerie Percier, Paris. Associates with Abstraction-Création group.

1935 Exhibits Galerie "Cahiers d'Art," Paris.

1937 The Montserrat exhibited Spanish Pavilion, Paris Exposition.

1940 Forced to abandon welded metal sculpture because of war-induced shortage of oxygen and acetylene. Turns instead to drawings and modeling in plaster.

1942 Begins a second Montserrat in plaster, representing a kneeling, screaming woman, a second response to the agonies of war. This sculpture left unfinished, the head only having been cast in bronze. Dies March 27 at 8 rue R.S. Barboux, Arcueil, a suburb of Paris, where he lived and had his studio.

45

["## catalog of the exhibition", "### Lenders to the Exhibition", "Mme Berton, Paris; Philippe Dotremont, Brussels-Uccle; Mme Roberta Gonzalez, Paris; Mme Gonzalez-Roux, Paris; Fernand C. Graindorge, Liège; Hans Hartung, Paris; André Lefèvre, Paris; Alberto Magnelli, Paris; Alfred Richet, Paris; Nelson A. Rockefeller, New York; Mr. and Mrs. Charles Zadok, Milwaukee.", "Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo; Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris; Philadelphia Museum of Art.", "Galerie Denise René, Paris.", "Unless otherwise indicated, all works are lent from the collection of the sculptor's daughter, Mme Roberta Gonzalez, Arcueil, Paris. Most of the dates given for the sculptures are approximate and have been supplied largely by Mme Gonzalez.", "### Catalog", "In dimensions height precedes width.", "1 *Inclined Ancient Head.* 1910-14. Bronze, 10⅝\". Collection Hans Hartung. Paris, Ill. p. 8.", "2 *The Couple.* 1927-29. Iron, 3½\" x 7½\". Galerie Denise René, Paris. Ill. p. 9.", "3 *Still Life.* 1929. Iron, 10⅝\". Collection Alberto Magnelli, Paris.", "4 *Harlequin.* 1929. Iron, 17½\". Collection André Lefèvre, Paris. Ill. p. 10.", "5 *Don Quizole.* 1929. Iron, 17\". Ill. p. 10.", "6 *Japanese Mask.* 1928. Bronze, 7½\". Ill. p. 12.", "7 *Reclining Head.* 1929. Iron, 6⅝\". Collection Alfred Richet, Paris. Ill. p. 13.", "8 *Mask of Pilar \"in the Sun.\"* 1929. Iron, 7½\". Ill. p. 11.", "9 *Two Peasant Women.* 1929. Iron, 9½\". Ill. p. 11.", "10 *Head.* 1930. Iron, 9\". Collection Mme Gonzalez-Roux, Paris. Ill. p. 12.", "11 *Head called \"the Rabbit.\"* 1930. Iron, 13\". Ill. p. 12.", "12 *Head.* c.1930. Iron, 8⅝\". Collection Hans Hartung, Paris.", "13 *Spanish Mask.* 1930. Bronze, 5¾\". Ill. p. 13.", "14 *The Dream.* 1931. Iron, 26½\". Ill. p. 16.", "15 *Woman Combing Her Hair.* 1931. Iron, 48\". Ill. p. 17.", "16 *Woman with a Basket.* c.1931. Iron, 71\". Ill. p. 18.", "17 *Standing Figure.* 1932. Iron, 50½\". Ill. p. 19.", "18 *The Prayer.* 1932. Iron, 31 x 37\". Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo. Ill. p. 20 (Exhibited in New York only.)", "19 *Dancer with Disheveled Hair.* c.1932. Iron, 20\". Ill. p. 20.", "20 *Dancer.* 1932. Silver, 8¼\". Philadelphia Museum of Art, A. E. Gallatin Collection. Ill. p. 19.", "21 *Head of the Little Montserrat.* 1932. Iron, 13\". Collection Hans Hartung, Paris. Ill. p. 38.", "22 *Head called \"the Swiss Woman.\"* 1932. Iron, 14¾\". Collection Fernand C. Graindorge, Liège. Ill. p. 37.", "23 *Head called \"the Big Trumpet.\"* c.1932. Iron, 38¼\". Collection Philippe Dotremont, Brussels-Uccle. Ill. p. 25.", "24 *Face called \"the Tunnel.\"* 1933. Iron, 18½\". Ill. p. 26.", "25 *The Lovers.* 1933. Iron, 17¾\". Ill. p. 26.", "26 *Head.* 1933. Silver, 5½\". Private collection, New York. Ill. p. 27.", "27 *Head.* 1933. Silver, 6½\". Ill. p. 27.", "28 *Maternity.* 1933. Iron, 52¼\". Ill. p. 21.", "29 *The Angel.* 1933. Iron, 66\". Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris. Ill. p. 22.", "30 *Dancer called \"à la Palette.\"* 1933. Iron, 30½\". Ill. p. 23.", "31 *Figure called \"la Giraffe.\"* 1934. Iron, 37½\". Ill. p. 28.", "32 *Head.* c.1934. Iron, 17¾\". The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Ill. p. 29.", "33 *Head with a Mirror.* 1934. Bronze, 23¼\". Collection Hans Hartung, Paris. Ill. p. 29.", "34 *Standing Peasant Woman.* 1934. Silver, 6¾\". Ill. p. 38 (Exhibited in New York only.)", "35 *Little Egyptian Torso.* 1934. Iron, 10\". Ill. p. 38.", "36 *Little Silver Mask.* 1934. Silver, 23⅝ x 3\". Ill. p. 13.", "37 *Head called \"the Cagourd.\"* 1934. Bronze, 9\". Ill. p. 14.", "38 *Reclining Figure.* 1934. Iron, 17 x 37\". Collection Nelson A. Rockefeller, New York. Ill. p. 1 and 30.", "39 *Elongated Figure.* 1935. Iron, 9½\". Ill. p. 30.", "40 *Sealed Woman.* 1935. Iron, 34¼\". Ill. p. 33.", "41 *Sealed Woman.* 1935. Iron, 46¼\". Ill. p. 32.", "42 *Reclining Head of a Man.* 1935. Bronze, 5½\" x 10¼\". Collection Mme Berton, Paris. Ill. p. 15.", "43 *Small Reclining Head.* 1935. Bronze, 4¼\". Collection Mme Berton, Paris. Ill. p. 14.", "44 *Little Dancer.* 1935. Iron, 67½\". Ill. p. 31.", "45 *Little Venus.* 1935. Iron, 8¼\". Ill. p. 31.", "46 *Woman with a Mirror.* 1936. Iron, 82\". Ill. p. 34.", "47 *Woman Combing Her Hair.* 1936. Iron, 52\". The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund. Ill. p. 35.", "48 *Figure called \"the Big Sickle.\"* 1936. Bronze, 18\".", "49 *Torso.* c.1936. Iron, 24¼\". Ill. p. 38.", "50 *Mask of the Crying Montserrat.* 1936. Bronze, 12\". Ill. p. 40.", "51 *The Montserrat.* 1936-37. Iron, 65\". Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Ill. p. 39.", "52 *Gothic Standing Man.* 1937. Iron, 20¾\". Collection Hans Hartung, Paris. Ill. p. 36.", "53 *Dancer called \"à la Marguerite.\"* 1938. Iron, 18½\". Ill. p. 36.", "46", "54 *Cactus Man I.* 1939-40. Iron, 26\". Ill. p. 37.", "55 *Cactus Man II.* 1939-40. Iron, 31½\". Ill. p. 37.", "56 *Abstract Figure.* 1942. Bronze, 13\". Collection Mme Berton, Paris. Ill. p. 36.", "57 *Head of the Montserrat II.* 1942. Bronze, 12¼\". Collection Mr. and Mrs. Charles Zadok, Milwaukee. Ill. p. 41.", "### Paintings, Drawings, Enamels.", "58 *Woman, Child, the Sea.* c.1900-05. Oil on cardboard, 21¼ x 15⅝\". Ill. p. 8.", "59 *The Fool Bath.* c.1900-05. Oil on cardboard, 16⅜ x 12¼\". Ill. p. 6.", "60 *Self Portrait.* 1941. Oil on plywood, 10⅜ x 6½\". Collection Mme Gonzalez-Roux, Paris.", "61 *Woman on her Knees.* c.1905-08. Crayon and pastel, 11 x 14½\".", "62 *Woman Washing her Arms.* c.1906-08. Watercolor and crayon, 5½ x 11\".", "63 *Face of a Little Girl.* c.1912-14. Pastel, 7¾ x 7½\".", "64 *Head of a Man with a Beard.* 1936. Pen and crayon, 9½ x 6¼\".", "65 *Head of a Woman.* 1936. Pen and watercolor, 8¼ x 7\".", "66 *Inclined Woman's Head.* 1936. Pen and crayon, 8¼ x 6¼\".", "67 *Elongated Head.* 1936. Pen and watercolor, 10⅝ x 6\".", "68 *Abstract Figure with a Triangular Spot.* 1936. Wash and crayon, 7¾ x 6\".", "69 *Figure with a Horn.* 1937. Pen and crayon, 11⅜ x 7½\".", "70 *Figures—Daisies.* 1938. Pen and crayon, 12¼ x 7¾\".", "71 *Cactus Man.* 1939. Pen and crayon, 10¼ x 7\".", "72 *Two Peasant Women.* 1940. Pen and wash, 9½ x 6¼\".", "73 *Crying Head.* 1940. Pen and wash, 12¼ x 9½\". Ill. p. 40.", "74 *Severe Mask.* 1940. Pen and wash, 11¾ x 9¾\".", "75 *Figure with a Cup.* 1941. Crayon and wash, 8¼ x 5¾\". Ill. p. 42.", "76 *Two Figures with While Linen.* 1941. Charcoal, wash and crayon, 9¾ x 6¼\".", "77 *Anxious Mother.* 1941. Pen and wash, 8⅝ x 4\". Ill. p. 40.", "78 *Austere Mother.* 1941. Pen, watercolor and pencil, 7¾ x 5¾\".", "79 *L'Elan.* 1941. Pen and wash, 14½ x 11\". Ill. p. 43.", "80 *The Appeal.* 1941. Pen and wash, 9½ x 12¼\".", "81 *Figure of Terror

12 DEGAND, LÉON. *Julio Gonzalez*, 1876-1942. Art d'aujourd'hui (Boulogne s. Seine) 6:[16-20] ill. Jan. 1950.

13 DEGAND, LÉON. *La sculpture de 1930 à 1950*. Art d'aujourd'hui (Boulogne s. Seine) ser. 2 no. 3:24, 25 ill. Jan. 1951. Additional references p. 4, 28.

14 DUDLEY, DOROTHY. *Four post-moderns*. Magazine of Art (N. Y.) 28 no. 9:546-547, 572 ill. Sept. 1935.

15 ESTIENNE, CHARLES. *Un grand sculpteur: Gonzalez, L'Observateur (Paris) no. 91:20-21 Feb. 7, 1952*.

16 FARNOUD-REYNAUD, LUCIEN. *Julio Gonzalez*. Paris, Imprimerie Union, 1931. "Brochure published in connection with the exhibition in the Galerie 'Le Centaure', Brussels."

17 FERNANDEZ, LUIS. *El escultor Gonzalez. A. C. (Barcelona) 2 no. 5:30-31 ill. 1932*.

18 GERTZ, ULRICH. *Plastik der Gegenwart*. p. 38-39, 184, 221 ill. Berlin, Rembrandt, 1953.

19 GIEDION-WELCKER, C. *Modern Plastic Art*. p. 140, 155, ill. Zurich, H. Girsberger, 1937. Also German edition.

20 GIEDION-WELCKER, C. *Contemporary Sculpture*. p. xix, xxix, 57, 174-179, 264, 268, 310, ill. New York, Wittenborn, 1955. Also Hatje ed. (Stuttgart 1955).

21 [Gonzalez; sculpture, 1936] Cahiers d'art (Paris) 11 no 6-7:201-202 ill. 1936. Illustrations only.

22 GROHMANN, WILL. *Bildende Kunst und Architektur*. p. 251, 261-262, 270, 271, 349. Berlin, Suhrkamp, 1953.

23 JAKOVSKI, ANATOLE. [Gonzalez] D'Aci d'Alla (Barcelona) 22 no. 179:[52] ill. Dec. 1934.

24 JAKOVSKI, ANATOLE. [*Julio Gonzalez (Galerie Percier) *] Cahiers d'art (Paris) 9 no. 5-8:207, 209 ill. 1934.

25 JIMENEZ-PLACER Y SUAREZ DE LEZO, FERNANDO. *Historia del Arte Español con un Estudio sobre el Arte del Siglo XX por Alejandro Cirici Pellicer*. 2:968-971 ill. Barcelona, Labor, 1955.

26 KLERX, ALEXANDRE. *Julio Gonzalez, ouvrier du fer*. Beaux Arts (Brussels) Feb. 15, 1952.

27 MARTINIE, A. H. *Julio Gonzalez au Musée National d'Art Moderne*. Arts (Paris) no. 345:4 ill. Feb. 8, 1952.

28 N[ETTER], M[ARIA]. *Hommage à Gonzalez—Eisenplastik*. Werk (Zurich) 42, no. 8:164-6 ill. (supp.) Aug. 1955.

29 NEW YORK. MUSEUM OF MODERN ART. *Masters of Modern Art*, ed. by Alfred H. Barr, Jr. p. 90-91 ill. New York, Museum of Modern Art 1954.

30 NEW YORK. MUSEUM OF MODERN ART. *Sculpture of the Twentieth Century*. p. 22, 42-43 ill. New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1952. Catalog for exhibition at Philadelphia Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago and Museum of Modern Art.

31 PARIS. MUSÉE NATIONAL D'ART MODERNE. *Julio Gonzalez, Sculptures*. 23 p. ill. Paris, Musées nationaux, 1952. Catalog of exhibition.

32 PERCIER, GALERIE, PARIS. *Julio Gonzalez, April 1934*. Paris, 1934. Forward by Maurice Raynal.

33 PEREZ ALFONSECA, RICARDO. *Julio Gonzalez*. Madrid. Editorial "Castillas," 1934. Reviewed in *Gaceta de Arte* (Tenerife) no. 30 1934.

34 PORTMANN, B. *Julio Gonzalez (1876-1942) "Les danseuses"* Du (Zurich) 10, no. 5:27-29 ill. May 1950.

35 RAMSDEN, E. H. *Sculpture: Theme and Variations*. p. 38, plate 75A London, Lund Humphries, 1953.

36 RAMSDEN, E. H. *Twentieth Century Sculpture*. p. 38, plate 57A London, Pleiades, 1949.

37 RITCHIE, ANDREW C. *Sculpture of the Twentieth Century*. p. 29-30, 104-105, 164-167, 228, ill. New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1952.

38 SMITH, DAVID. *Julio Gonzalez*. Art News(N. Y.) 54 no. 9, Feb. 1956.

39 TRIER, EDUARD. *Moderne Plastik von Auguste Rodin bis Marino Marini*. p. 67-68, 88, plates 78, 79 Frankfurt, Büchergilde Gutenberg, 1955.

40 VOLLMER, HANS. *Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler des XX. Jahrhunderts*. vol. 2, p. 273 Leipzig, Seemann, 1955. Bibliography.

41 VRINAT, ROBERT. *Convergence*. L'Age Nouveau (Paris) p. 94-95 Apr. 1952.

42 WESTHEIM, PAUL. *Paris: neue Zielsetzung*. Das Kunstblatt (Berlin) 15:244-246 ill. Aug. 1931.

43 YVERDON. HOTEL DE VILLE. *Sept Pionniers de la Sculpture Moderne*. p. 86-[89], plates 9, 10, 11 Yverdon, 1954. Note by Cécile Goldscheider; notes on sculptures by Roberta Gonzalez.

44 ZURICH. KUNSTHAUS. *Begründer der modernen Plastik*. p. 3-4, 7-8, 14-15, 23-24, 35-38, plates VIII, IX, X Zurich, 1954.

Photograph Credits

Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam: pp.11 left, 17, 39; Roger André, Paris, p.7 bottom; Bernès, Marouteau and Cie., Paris: p.1, 30 top; Henri Guilbaud, Versailles: p.20 top; E. Janet Le Caisne, Paris: p.10 right; Yves Hervochon, Paris: p.28; Philadelphia Museum of Art: p.19 right; Galerie Denise René, Paris: p.9; Soichi Sunami: pp.29 left, 35, 38 top right, 41 top; Marc Vaux, Paris: pp.12 left and top right, 23, 27 left, 29 right, 30 bottom, 37 right, 38 top left.

FOREWORD

Praise and recognition have at last come to Julio Gonzalez.
Now that his eminent work is no longer hidden in his
former quiet home at Arceuil, Gonzalez today is being
given his rightful place as the creator of a new style in
sculpture and as one of the greatest creative geniuses of
our time.

Friends who remember Gonzalez speak highly of his
quiet pride, his typical Spanish dignity, his noble character.
He was too shy to complain about his misery and lack of
funds or even to ask art dealers to show his work. Though
it was a source of great disappointment to him that his
work did not receive any response during his lifetime, he
never lost faith in its ultimate success.

Julio Gonzalez was born on September 21st, 1876, in Barcelona, Spain. His father and grandfather enjoyed good reputations as goldsmiths and were master craftsmen in decorative iron works. Thus, Gonzalez grew up in an atmosphere of a long established tradition of metal work. About 1900, the family moved to Paris. There, Gonzalez was introduced to Picasso by his brother Joan who had known Picasso before in Barcelona. Manolo, the sculptor, Maurice Raynal, the critic, and Max Jacob, the poet, also became his friends. Though their discussions and disputes interested him greatly, he did not join the cubist movement. Tiring very quickly of the noisy Parisian avant-guard life and the endless discussions extending deep into the early morning hours, he retired to the quieter life at Arceuil. His work to create a new order of reality began. Gonzalez' work is a complete break with the past and with the tradition of Rodin and is far removed from the work of his fellow

[6]

[9]

[10]

[3]

[2]

[4]

contemporaries, the cubist sculptors. This can already be
clearly seen in his subtle early portraits and in those first
masks. These works are already of a strange beauty. The
masks are reminiscences of the human face, created in
sheet metal and wire, hammered and welded together.

The relative solitude of Arceuil enabled him to analyze
the human figure, its relation to the mysterious forces of
nature and to do technical research into the manifold
possibilities of iron. The human figure always remained
the center of his art. Like Picasso and Klee, Gonzalez never
became completely abstract. And like Klee, he went beyond
outer appearances and searched deep into the creative forces
of man and his soul. Although his roots remained in nature,
he succeeded in creating new visionary forms.

It was in 1927 that Gonzalez emerged from his long and
lonely struggle to take a decisive step toward the develop-
ment of modern sculpture. This time he produced a group
of new masks, more simple and more architectural than pre-
vious works. Highlights of this period are the "Harlequin"
of 1929, the "Montserrat", the "Woman Combing Her
Hair" and "Homme Cactus". The large figure of the
"Montserrat" with its human warmth, its architectural
simplicity, surpasses in complete beauty anything he did
before and belongs to the great masterpieces of the 20th
century. The group of heads which are studies in expression
for the "Montserrat" also bear close inspection. This figure
of an affectionate motherly woman is meant to be a symbol
for the eternal "Mother Earth". Quite different in style
is "Femme a la Corbeille", far more abstract, more fantastic,
and revealing his discoveries of new ways to use iron.
The strange but fascinating "Homme Cactus" found its
counterpart in his latest work, the great figure of a man.

[7]

[8]

[5]

[11]

Because of the shortage of oxygen and acetylene during the war, he had to use plaster instead of iron. In this last sculpture he returned to the human form as expressed in "Montserrat". Unfortunately, this last figure is lost today.

Iron proved to be his perfect material. Hitherto unpopular with sculptors, the use of iron widened the possibilities of his inventive forms. Iron was best suited to his elegant curves, his twisted forms striking with vigor into the air. His use of iron influenced a whole generation of sculptors who followed his style.

During World War II, Gonzalez moved to the south of France. Lack of metal forced him to concentrate on drawings and during the years 1940 to 1942, he created a beautiful group of projects for future sculpture. In each drawing is the sensitivity to structural relations, the expression of perfect balance between visionary forms, and dynamic inventive ideas for execution of his conception of art in iron.

Julio Gonzalez died in 1942. All of his work had been created in the short span of 15 years. Like all sculptors, Gonzalez had planned to cast a limited edition of some of his sculpture. And it is understandable that because of his life of misery and poverty and the difficulties he encountered during the war years, that so few early casts are in existence, and his plans for casting were left for the future. Now that his fame is growing, his daughter, Roberta Gonzalez, is carrying out her father's plans for making casts to be executed by craftsmen such as Valsuani and Susse who had worked with her father and are familiar with Gonzalez' technique.

New York, February 1956.

CHARLOTTE WEIDLER

10

dans un déséntretissement absolu. Je puis donc résumer
brièvement la vie de Julio Gonzalez. Il n'est pas
inutile, cependant, que nous sachions que rien ne
s'oppose à sa vocation dans la famille de ferronniers
d'art dans laquelle il naquit à Barcelone en 1876 et
qui l'éleva dans une atmosphère artistique et artisti-
que. C'est ainsi qu'il apprit, tout age, en même
temps que son frère Joan, de sept ans son aîné,
travailler les métaux, tout en suivant les cours du soir
à l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts. A la mort du grand-père,
le frère Joan prit la direction d'atelier de terror-
nerie, mais sa santé ne lui permet pas d'assurer long-
temps cette charge et, en 1899, la famille Gonzalez
vint s'installer à Paris. Aussitôt s'établit le contact
avec le groupe Picasso, Manolo, Max Jacob et Maurice
Raynaud et commença, pour les deux frères Gonzalez,
une période productive en dessins et en peintures.
Mauris quelques années plus tard, en 1908, Joan retourne
marcher en Espagne et Julio Gonzalez, à la suite d'une
brouille avec Picasso, perd aussitôt le contact avec
avec tous ses camarades novateurs et entre dans une
grande période de solitude. Son évolution s'en trouve
désorientée, d'autant plus que sa première formation
et sans doute aussi sa douceur native l'inclinaient à
à un classicisme harmonieux et que, d'autre part, il
avait une préférence pour la peinture. En dépit de
tentatives intermittentes pour résoudre le conflict qui
l'opposait à ses dispositions plus profondes de
createur, cette stagnation et son désarroi se pronon-
gèrent pendant de nombreuses années. N'y était cer-
tainedant pas étrangère la dualité, sinon l'instabilité
de son caractère que nous pouvions soupçonner lorsque
sa fille Roberta Gonzalez évoque son souvenir : « Je
le revois, calme et nerveux; doux et violent; irritable
et détoné; détouragé et plein d'espoir; aimable et
fermé; confiant et méfiant; taciturne et enjoué; c'est
ainsi qu'il passait souvent par des états extrêmes. »
Il réagissait cependant par moment à sa taciturnité
que renforçait les épreuves après les épreuves, et
il s'était fait des relations nouvelles, quelques amitiés
parmi ses contemporains artistes ou écrivains. Il avait
aussi renoué avec Picasso.

Ce n'est pourtant que dans le courant des années
1927-1930, alors qu'il avait atteint la cinquantaine,
que Gonzalez reconnut sa voie et s'y engagea avec
assurance. Il ne lui restait qu'un peu plus de dix
années pour se réaliser, mais il les utilisa pleinement.
Dans ce court laps de temps, et malgré les difficultés
qui ne s'aplanirent jamais, malgré aussi, sur la fin, la
nouvelle épreuve de la guerre qui le mit en l'impos-
sibilité matérielle de sculpteur, il accomplit l'œuvre
prodigieuse qui fait aujourd'hui sa glorie universelle.

Cette œuvre que la tradition familiale, peut-être,
et l'apprentissage que sa jeunesse avaient veuée au
métal et à la mise en évidence des propriétés plasti-
ques et expressives de ce matériau, nous en recon-
naissons les prémices dans les premiers masques et
bustes de bronze ou de cuivre repoussés qu'il martela

vers 1910. Par la suite, c'est la tentation du cubisme
et de sa rigueur géométrique qui marquent sa geure-
che et ses réalisations dont les plus fortes sont ces
masques empreints d'une vérité sévère que nous
n'avons connues avant lui que dans les sculptures
primitives de haute époque. Mais ses créations plus
significatives sont peut-être celles, annonciatrices du
grand œuvre de Gonzalez, dont le Baiser > ou
< l'Arlequin > dont les éléments constructifs sont
dépoïllés en formes abstraites d'une pureté géomé-
trique absolue, ou bien comme le « Don Quichotte »
qui lance déjà le dessin de sa ligne dans l'espace pour
enseigner des plans immatériels.

On remarquera que les œuvres « cubistes » de
Gonzalez sont encore assemblées à l'aide de rivets. Ce
n'est que bien plus tard que Gonzalez utilisa sa
l'Exécution de ses sculptures le procédé de la sououdre
autogène qu'il avait connu pourraient et pratiquera
vers 1916-17 alors que pendant la guerre, puis assurer
son existence et celle de sa famille, il avait travaillé
par quelque temps aux usines Renault réquisitionnées par
les autorités militaires. C'est seulement lorsqu'il eut
définitivement fait du fer, de la ferraille souvent récu-
pérée par raison d'économie dans les débris, son
matériau d'élection qu'il se souvint du son expériment
de la sououdre et en reprit la pratique.

Nous ne devons pas regretter, maintenant, que les
circonstances aient voulu sa rupture avec ses premiers
amis cubistes, l'abandon de ce milieu d'avant-garde
pour un milieu plus sage, et détourné ainsi son regard
de l'aventure cubiste. Autrement, Gonzalez fut devan
dans doute le meilleur sculpteur cubiste. De « la nuit
d'enquêteure et d'angoïse » dansquelle il s'enjoignait
solitaire, il est sorti vainqueur de toutes les épreuves,
le grand et unique Gonzalez. Je pourrais presque
m'abstenir de décrire, d'analyser, de comparer les
inventions plastiques qu'il multiplie pendant les
années crucales de son affirmation, de 1927 à 1942,
car leurs images surgissent spontanément au se-
nonéché du nom de Gonzalez.

A partir de 1930 et jusqu'en 1933, Gonzalez exécute
ses sculptures les plus linéaires et l'abstraction va
si loin qu'apparentement elles semblent abstraites
comme la grande danseuses dite « L'Ange » qui appa-
tient maintenant au Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris,
la « Maternité », la « Femme se coiffant » le « Tub ».
Le « Personnage débout » ou « la Surnière » et ces
toutes petites sculptures en argent surmontées avec
humour « La petite Trompette » ou « Le Pompier ».
Ensuite, sans abandonner pour autant l'utilisation du
matériau-espace, Gonzalez, en introduisant des clé-
ments, en vient à concevoir une sculpture aux
formes plus pleines qui lui fait abandonner peu
à peu le linéaire. Les grandes œuvres qui jalonnent
cette période sont la « Femme se coiffant » de 1946
(au Museum of Modern Art de New York) la « Femme
au miroir » de la même année — dans le même temps,
Gonzalez avait exécuté sa grande sculpture figurative

« La Montserrat » qui fut exposée au pavillon espagnol
de l'Exposition Internationale de 1937 et appartient
maintenant au Musée d'Amsterdam — pour aboutir
à ses dernières sculptures en fer, aux « Hommes
Cactus » de 1939. La guerre survenue le force à
abandonner plusieurs œuvres en fer forgé inachevées,
car il était devenu impossible de se procurer le gaz
acétylène et l'oxygène nécessaires à la sououdre. De
cette période, il a laissé de nombreux dessins qui sont
autant de projets de sculptures. Au retour de l'Exode
il lui resta à peine le temps de commencer l'exécution
de deux sculptures en plâtre, une « Figure abstraite »
ct une autre naturaliste, une nouvelle « La Montserrat »
dont l'expression terrifiée traduisait la souffrance per-
sonnelle de l'artiste « devant l'impensable catastrophe ».

Lorsqu'il mourut, à soixante-six ans, dans sa petite
maison d'Arcules, dans la banlieue parisienne, le
27 mars 1942, en l'absence de sa fille et de ses sœurs
réfugiées en zone libre, Gonzalez savait jusqu'où
il pouvait aller, mais il ne soupçonnait peut-être pas,
car sa modestie aveuglait certainement sa clairvoyance
sur ce point, avec quelle puissance l'impulsion de son
œuvre entraînerait le destin de l'art de notre époque.
C'est dans la mesure même où elle fut prématurée,
ce s'à-dire projetée vers l'avenir par sa prudence,
que l'œuvre de Gonzalez reste à nos yeux exemplaire
et se découvre vraiment à « actuelle ».

L'actualité de Gonzalez est d'ahorb fondée sur l'in-
vention plastique qu'il nous propose et qu'il avait
enonceé ainsi: « L'importance du problème à résoudre
ici n'est pas seulement d'obtenir une œuvre harmo-
nieuse d'un ensemble parfaitement équilibré. Non!
mais d'obtenir ce résultat par l'union de la Matière
et de l'Espace, par l'union des formes réelles avec les
formes imaginées et suggérées par des points établis
ou bien par des perforations. Ces formes doivent être
confordes et rendues indivisibles les uns des autres
comme le sont l'un de l'autre le corps et l'esprit. Les
deformations synthétiques des formes matérielles, de
la couleur, de la lumière, sont les perforations, l'Espace
de plans compacts, donnent à l'œuvre un aspect mysté-
rieux, fantastique, voire diabolique. C'est que l'artiste
tout en transposant les formes de la nature, en leur
insufflant une nouvelle vie, collabore en même temps
avec l'Espace qui les divinise. »

Cette actualité est rattachée aussi à l'apport ou plus
exactement à l'appropriation, par sa mise en œuvre,
d'un matériau susceptible de recevoir les intentions
nouvelles: le fer, dont Gonzalez a en même temps
voulu humaniser la vocation. N'at-il pas dit explicite-
ment: « L'âge du fer a commencé, il y a des siècles,
par produire (malheureusement) des armes, quelques
une très belles. De nos jours, il permet en plus la
construction de ponts, d'édifices industriels, de rails
de chemin de fer, etc.. Il est grand temps que ce
matériau cesse d'être meurtrier et simple matériau
d'une science mécanisée: la porte est toute grande

11

ouverte, aujourd'hui, afin que ce matériau, pénétrant
dans le domaine de l'art, soit battu et forge par de
paisibles mains d'artistes. » Je ne voudrais pas croire
que la résistance au fonctionnalisme et à la mécani-
sation au profit d'une conception plus humaine, ainsi
exprimée, réduise aux yeux de certains modernistes
la présence durable de l'œuvre de Gonzalez, ni qu'ils
puissent retenir à l'encontre de cette permanence le
fait qu'elle ne soit pas abstraite. Elle ne l'est pas, en
effet, et n'a jamais prétendu l'être. La sculpture de
Gonzalez n'est pas abstraite, car si nous raisonnons
bien, il ne peut exister d'œuvre d'art plasique qui
le soit, c'est-à-dire de pur concept, distincte de toute
image et séparée de toute sensation et de tout senti-
ment. Mais plus encore, si nous ressentons à ce point
la présence et la permanence de l'œuvre de Gonzalez,
comme nous ressentons toujours celle aussi de Bran-
cusi et si nous pouvons réunir dans un même senti-
ment d'admiration et de confiance ces deux pion-
niers, malgré les oppositions, voire les contradictions
de leurs desseins et de leurs moyens, c'est justement
de la lucidité de leurs refus des pétitions de principes,

des contraintes purement théoriques et des définitions
ou des déterminations dogmatiques, au profit de
l'usage des libertés plénières qui assurent la dignité
de l'acte créateur et de son produit: l'œuvre, au
profit encore d'une « naturalisation » au monde de
celle-ci. Ces deux artistes sont grands parce qu'ils
n'ont pas voulu se satisfaire d'exercices de pure spé-
culation mentale et parce que chacune de leurs sculpt-
tures est le résultat d'une expérience humaine totale
et la matérialisation d'une réalité non moins totale.

Pour ma part, je reconnais justement le caractère
exemplaire et actuel de l'œuvre de Gonzalez dans
le témoignage qu'elle nous apporte d'un dépassement
prémonitoire du fait abstrait et de la résolution spon-
tanée de l'antinomie figuration-abstraction. Mais il ne
faut pas négliger non plus que l'humilité artisanale de
Gonzalez, ainsi que celle de Brancusi, a retrouvé la
dignité fondamentale du « faire » et de la matière
et sans doute le sens primitif de l'acte humain dans
une intervention fabricatrice en reprenant la démarche
naturelle des rapports de l'homme et de la nature.

R.V. Gindertael

Gonzalez: Masque couché dit « Le Religieux », bronze, 1941-42

14

Deyrolle

par Herta Wescher

Deyrolle: Portrait - Peinture, Gall, 1952, 130 x 97, collection Le Corneur photo Lund Hansen

Dans l'art d'aujourd'hui, Deyrolle tient une place
assez singulière, due en partie à son âge qui le désigne,
pourrait-on dire, comme « l'aîné des jeunes ». Les cinq
à dix ans d'avance qu'il a sur ceux qui forment l'équipe
essentielle de la jeune génération, le client à la tradition
française d'avant-guerre, alors que les cadets n'en ont
reçu qu'un écho imprécis. Dans les œuvres cubistes,
il a saisit l'appel à la discipline qui fut pour lui
impérieux et décida de sa voie. Il a joint le monve-
ment abstrait au moment où la peinture s'apprêtait
à disposer librement des éléments primaires, lignes,
formes et couleurs, et il a fait siens ces éléments clas-
siques pour les adapter aux exigences les plus variées
qui se sont imposées au cours de son évolution.
Réfutant tous les procédés aux effets hasardeux, il se

bat, pour ainsi dire, avec les matières les plus réfrac-
taires pour leur extorquer la même puissance d'expres-
sion que d'autres tirent de techniques plus suggestives.
Si des artistes de la même « mi-génération », formés
à l'étranger, comme Hartung ou Wols, partis de l'ex-
pressionisme abstrait, ont pu s'approcher de l'art
informel au point d'être regardés aujourd'hui comme
ses précursors, Deyrolle a plutôt poursuivi son che-
min en marge du grand courant, mais dans un sens
parallele, vers une peinture de résonnances poétiques
très larges.

Il a su donner à son vocabulaire plastique une
flexibilité étonnante, variant constamment les formes
constitutives de ses compositions. Elles peuvent com-
porter des contours fins ou épais, des lignes droites et

15

Deyrolle: Mégarée, 1945 photo Hervochon

Deyrolle: Mouvement, 1951, 130 x 89

16

cursives, brisées, hachées ou enlacées en des ornements gracieux. Parfois, il distribue les plans dans un rythme clair et ordonné, d'autres fois, il les imbrique en des suites infinies, se prolongeant dans l'espace. Des grandes formes peuvent presque engloutir de petites qui, cependant chantent avec insistance. Souvent, la surface paraît transparente comme une boule de verre à l'intérieur de laquelle des brisures de formes remuent et s'agitent. Plus surprenante encore se révèle la richesse des couleurs, développée par Deyrolle avec une sensibilité mouvante. Ses gammes étranges se dégradent en des nuances subtiles, qu'il confronte de manière audacieuse et prudente à la fois. À la finesse des tons s'allient les intensités différentes de la matière, répandue par le pinceau ou la brosse en couches plus ou moins liquides ou solides. Deyrolle ne s'est jamais opposé à travailler dans la pâte, tout en l'assujettissant au même contrôle sévère, lui donnant, en des striages ou des touches conscientes, la valeur exactement prévue.

C'est donc en se servant d'un instrument toujours plus aiguise que Deyrolle élabore ses conceptions picturales qui, depuis quinze ans, tendent à l'enrichissement interne de l'art non-figuratif. Il a fait « le passage de la ligne » en sautant d'un bord à l'autre, sans transition, ce qui l'a mis du coup sur son terrain propre. Ses œuvres de jeunesse — des paysages bretons qui dans leurs formes massives et leurs couleurs lourdes rappellent la période bretonne de Gauguin — ne l'ont pas conduit à la « ligne de demarcation ». La vocation lui est venue plutôt du dehors. C'est Domela qui, lui découvrant les possibilités illimitées d'un art autonome de pure formes et de lignes, a fait jaillir l'étincelle. Ces propositions nouvelles, Deyrolle ne les a pas accueillies comme l'invitation à un simple changement de style: il y a senti la fonction essentielle que l'art, ainsi envisagé, pourrait avoir dans sa vie. La peinture se préterait désormais à traduire les idées les plus universelles, à participer dans son domaine au progrès humain.

Comprenant le rôle significatif de l'art abstrait dans sa pleine richesse, il s'est préservé de toute sclérose plastique. Il n'a adopté aucune manière, aucune ordonnance formelle, saissant l'entière liberté de suivre son inspiration qui, à chaque toile peut l'emmener vers d'autres solutions. Son imagination se nourrit aussi bien de la rêverie que de la méditation, de visions vagues que d'intuitions précises. Parfois, l'élan spontané s'oppose à toute expression définie, le theme s'indiquant en des grands traits soutenus par le poids des couleurs, plus souvent il ne se réalise que dans l'achèvement minutieux, les valeurs subtilement pesées s'unissant dans les harmonies les plus délicates.

Si Deyrolle est toujours conscient des moyens mis en œuvre, l'inconscient n'en participe pas moins à sa création, jetant parfois sur des compositions purement abstraites des reflets du monde réel. Quelqu'architecture hallucinante, aperçue un jour lointain, peut

Deyrolle: Tucl, 1952, 92x73
Deyrolle: Adrien, 1953, 120x60

réapparaître dans la structure d'une toile; la lumière
ou la végétation du midi peuvent imprégner une
autre, accomplie dans l'atelier de Paris, sans que l'ar-
tiste s'en rende compte lui-même. Les titres qu'il donne
à ses tableaux appartiennent à une langue imaginaire,
dont l'alphabet lui sert à les grouper sous des signes
d'une même sonorité. Mais ces titres correspondent
étranglement à sa poésie singulière et personnelle, où
des fécères éblouissantes succèdent à des histoires ter-
nes et mélancoliques. On a souvent l'impression que
Deyrolle se plaît à nous poser des devinettes dont il
ignore lui-même la réponse exacte. L'art est pour lui
un jeu subtil où l'intelligence créatrice triomphe sans
fins déterminées. Dans ce jeu, il tient toujours quel-
ques atouts en réserve qui, finalement décident du
gain. Et ce n'est pas toujours l'accord principal des
éléments qui l'emporte, mais parfois des petits signes
ou taches plaisants, qui surgissent comme pour mettre
en doute la gravité de l'ensemble. Deyrolle n'aime,
ni ne sait donner des explications sur sa peinture.
Quand il vous montre ses toiles, il attend avec une
curiosité visible votre réaction sans vouloir l'appuyer.
Il reconnaît au spectateur le droit d'interpréter ses
tableaux comme bon lui semble, les considérant lui-
même comme « le support de multiples possibilités
de rêve ». C'est au fil des vastes associations en chaîne
qu'on rencontre curieusement l'artiste; on y trouve
un contraste immédiat qui plus difficilement s'établit
dans la langue quotidienne où parfois on se sent fata-
lement étranger vis-à-vis de ce peintre, le plus français
de l'Ecole de Paris.

Comme il est dans sa peinture, il est dans sa vie:
indépendant et sincère, communicatif sans parler de
lui. Même si l'on est ami avec lui, on ne sait pas
grand' chose sur sa personne, sinon qu'il tient à cer-
tains principes, à des journées réglées, qu'il est un
grand travailleur que guide le sens de la responsabilité
envers sa mission artistique. Dans le cadre modeste
de son atelier, il vit entouré d'objets précieux d'art
exotique dans lesquels il aime probablement une
parenté d'esprit qui nous demeure secrète. Aussi décidé
qu'il se montre dans son goût, il l'est aussi dans ses
sympathies et ses antathies humaines. Mais ceux
qu'il accueille sont toujours pris par son charme per-
sonnel, par son humour superbe, prêt à éclater à
chaque instant. La spiritualité de ses gentilles raille-
ries fait l'heureuse contre-partie du sérieux des
réflexions dont il anime les discussions où il a toujours
son mot à dire.

La distance d'âge, si indécise qu'elle soit, qui le
sépare des plus jeunes, il la sent comme eux qui,
accoutumés actuellement à un langage direct et infor-
mel, n'ont pas l'accès facile à sa peinture soignée
et réservée. Mais quand il expose à leur côté, ils
admirent sans restrictions la maturité, qui aujourd'
d'hui assure à Deyrolle une importance incontesteé.

Herta Wescher

Deyrolle: Syphrein, 92 x 73, 1955, coll. P. Wurth
photo Hervochon

20

Esthétique et Art Abstrait ¹)

par C.L. Popovici

Une des plus courantes objections faites à l'art
abstrait est que malgré sa prétention d'être un art
transcendental, il est informé par une matière dont
les éléments « mondains », comme par exemple les
couleurs, se trouvent dans la nature.

A cette objection on pourrait répondre que le rouge
que nous percevons dans la nature n'existe pas comme
tel, puisqu'il n'est qu'un simili-rouge. Il faut avoir
présente l'idée que les données « impressionnelles »
qui ont pour fonction de « profiler » la couleur, la
surface, la forme, c'est-à-dire qui ont pour fonction
la « représentation » sont en principe radicalement
distintes de la couleur, de la surface, de la forme,
bref, de toutes les qualités de la chose.

La couleur est donc une existence dans le sens de
Husserl) et elle n'existe pas dans les choses, mais
comme structure de la conscience et son « applica-
tion » aux choses ou aux images n'est qu'une question
d'attitude de la conscience ou avec un mot plus précis,
une thèse que pose celle-ci. Il est donc permis d'affir-
mer que le rouge qui est dans un tableau abstrait
d'où on a éliminé toute allusion au monde) a une
parfaite légitimité et constitue un moyen cognitif
transcendental (ou métaphysique). La couleur n'a
done aucune nécessité de s'associer à une chose, soit
présente soit présentifiée (imaginée ou mémorisée).
L'essence « rouge » peut avoir non seulement toutes
les explications individuelles, objectives, existentielles,
mais elle peut, en vertu de son universalité (puisque
les essences sont universelles) nous apparaître comme
une réalité transcendentale. On peut donc voir,
en principe, l'essence rouge, comme on voit ce rouge,
ect autre rouge, etc., on peut voir également l'essence
« son ». Voit, veut dire appréhender tant immédi-
tement qu'authentiquement, comme sans aucun doute
il est possible de le faire quand il s'agit de l'être
individuel. Il est certain, donc, que les couleurs et
les sons « purs » peuvent ainsi informer même d'an-
tres représentations que celles du monde. Cette vision
de la couleur essentielle constitue dans le langage phé-
nomenologique courant une réduction transcendente,
où le monde, comme existence, se trouve mis « hors
circuit », en parenthèse, ou simplement anéantisé,
pour faire « place » à un autre monde, cette fois non-
existentiel et purement transcendental. Bien entendu
ce « monde » existe seulement comme sens, ou inten-

(1) Fragments d'un essai du même titre, à paraître prochainement.

21

tionalité de la conscience, puisque la conscience est
toujours conscience de « quelque chose ».

Nous pouvons en conclure que les couleurs ou les
sons purs peuvent constituer les supports du monde
non-existentiel, on de l'être absolu tel qu'il apparait
à la conscience transcendente.

Le Génie artistique (dans le sens suprapersonnel
que donne Kant à ce vocable) trouve dans le royaume
transcendental de l'art les structures plastiques qui
servent de support non pas au monde ou aux éléments
mondifiants, mais à l'être absolu, négation de tout
existentiel comme tel, qui se révele au Génie à travers
la création artistique.

Mais on peut se demander en ce cas quelle pourrait
être la structure des images extra-mondaines ? On l'a
déjà signalé, aucune allusion au monde existentiel.
Pour ce motif, non seulement l'imagerie cubiste, futu-
riste, expressionniste, etc., qui représent par rap-
port à l'art abstrait proprement dit le premier essai
d'annihilation du monde cohérent, mais les divers
surréalismes abstraitisants (Klee, Ernst, Arp, Miro,
etc.) ne peuvent pas constituer les linéaments d'un
art abstrait dans le vrai sens de ce mot (non figuratif
et non objectif). Ce monde est de toutes pièces un
monde existentiel, et comme tel au-delà de l'incidence
des *essences*. Il est évident que l'abstracition qui pré-
tend « abstractiser » les objectivités (Bissière, Bazaine,
Mannesier, etc.) n'est qu'une sorte de vérisme, une
« mimesis » du monde. Cet art est justiciable des
mêmes critiques que les courants sus-mentionnés.

Ceci ne veut nullement dire que l'abstracition géomé-
étrique proposé comme le « vrai » abstractisme
dans la croyance assez enracinée que l'ordre géomé-
triique constitue l'ordre de la connaissance transcen-
dentale par excellence soit une authentique connaissance.

Il est vrai que la philosophie antique a tâché d'éle-
ver la géométrie au rang d'une *écidetique* pure, mais
il n'est pas moins vrai que Platon considérait les figu-
res géométriques comme des « simili-essences ».

Toute connaissance qui se rapporte aux structures
spatiales géométriques est une connaissance logique,
non pas métaphysique, vu que la géométrie exerce
une pression logique sur le flux vital de la conscience
pure, sur sa spontanéité et sa liberté. On ne peut
concevoir une fantaisie créatrice contrainte par les
mules logico-rationnelles géométriques. Les géom-
tres eux-mêmes préfèrent les supports de la conscience
fantastique aux supports de la conscience perceptive,
quand dans leurs exemplifications ils abandonnent les
mules rigides. Avec les supports fantastiques, en
échange, ils jouissent de toute la liberté pour trans-

former les figures rigides : cela veut dire qu'ils peu-
vent produire librement un nombre *infini* de formes
nouvelles. Il va de soi donc que le vrai géomètre opère
plutôt sur la fantaisie que sur les figures réelles. C'est
pour cela que la myste du triangle professé par
un Kandinsky, et en général toute « esthétique » fon-
dée sur la géométrie ne peut être réputée comme
connaissance métaphysique (transcendente). Si l'ar-
tiste réussit la désintegration des figures géométriques
en les transformant en des pures fantaisies, c'est alors
seulement qu'on peut parler d'une possibilité cogni-
tive. Les divers plasticismes et néo-plasticismes (de
type Mondriau par exemple) comme expression du
même ordre géométrique, tombent sous la même
critique.

Ce qu'on vient de dire sur le géométrisme plastique
vaut *mutatis mutandis* pour ce qu'on pourrait appeler
le géométrisme musical. Par ce géométrisme, il faut
entendre les « figures » musicales dont le support
réside dans la rigidité logico-déductive des structures
tonales qui, de fait, ne sont que des représentations
sonores de l'espace géométrique. Ainsi que le démon-
tre la « Psychologie de la Forme », les formes acous-
tiques constituent la même comportement de la cons-
tance que nous percevons comme une mélodie ne
sont que des comportements envers un certain espace
sonore, tout comme les sensations optiques qui ne
sont qu'un comportement envers un certain espace
visuel.

Si nous « préférons » les formes tonales — comme
les formes géométriques — c'est à cause d'un certain
*habitus* qu'a la conscience perceptive envers le
monde. La musique dite classique, qu'on croit être
une essence musicale, n'est en principe qu'un *modus
logico-déductif* de certaines structures spatiales,
« représentées » musicalement. La fantaisie reste cou-
verte par ces moultes et assujettie à la limitation de
« moi géométrique », le même moi en qui Descartes
logea son cogito, quand il assimilait le moi aux cer-
titudes géométriques absolues, comme fondement
d'un savoir universel.

L'esthétique atonale et en général toute esthétique
qui tend à l'annihilation des formes tonales, peut être
considérée comme le principe des structures musi-
cales infinies puisqu'elles anéantissent le monde. Le
moi sonore de *Bach*, tout comme le moi *cogitans* de
Descartes peche par la même limitation géométrique
et ne peut donc poser un savoir universel musical.

En principe, nous pouvons considérer les formes
géométriques les plus pures (triangle, rectangle,
sphère, etc.) comme étant en même temps les plus

limitées, excluant la vision infinie propre à la fantaisie
comme structure universelle de la conscience transcen-
dente. Les Pyramides représentent certainement
la suprême harmonie, mais engendrent en même
temps leur propre limitation. Nous touchons ainsi
le problème de l'Architecture. La croyance selon
laquelle l'Architecture est le type de l'abstraction
absolue parce qu'elle exclut les représentations phéno-
ménales par sa propre nature, a comme fondement
la même erreur du moi géométrique cartésien. Tâchant
de réduire cette erreur, Heidegger tombe dans l'errure
contraire, celle de proposer pour l'Architecture
un fondement existentiel. L'être du temple grec n'est pas
— il est vrai — un essentiel abstrait, mais il n'est
pas non plus un existentiel qui vaille en tant qu'ha-
bitat d'un dieu. Il est évident que l'Architecture
appartenant par sa propre nature à l'ordre géométri-
que ne peut laisser libre jeu à la fantaisie absolue.

Un problème qui s'impose est la valabilité de l'œ-
vre d'art abstrait, comme œuvre d'art *vraie*. Qui nous
garantit sa légitimité artistique ? Nons dirons des le
premier moment qu'une telle œuvre s'impose avec
l'obligativité de l'évidence. En expérimentant la
« vivance » (état vécu) *essentielle*, voire de l'essence
artistique, ou mieux dit de l'être absolu qui se dévoile
à nous à travers l'œuvre telle qu'elle a été décrite, nous
avons l'évidence de sa vérité, en tout cas le « Génie »
l'a. Le moi transcendental trouve dans l'œuvre d'art
abstraite son cogitatum pur. La conscience imagina-
tive, celle des motivations extra-mondaines, libère
alors la « réalité réelle » de l'être.

Quand la conscience artistique réussit à néantiser
le monde, alors cette néantisation n'est ni arbitraire
ni accidentelle, elle se produit d'une manière déter-
minée. Et cette manière est celle de lui laisser entre
les diverses possibilités de motivations extra-mondai-
nes (réves, délires, hallucinations, etc.) précisément la
motivation spécifique de l'art. Le monde doit s'effacer
d'une manière telle que cet effacement donne lieu
à *fortiori* à la possibilité artistique. Nous avons déjà
vu comment la conscience est imaginative avant d'être
perceptive. L'imagination artistique pure (extra mon-
daine) est une « donnée immédiate » et nécessaire
de la conscience. L'évasion du monde phénoménal
malgré la force de *Habitus* qu'a le moi pour le monde
est étranmoins un fait aussi indiscutable, aussi pré-
sent, aussi « en chair et os », que le monde même.
L'art abstrait s'impose donc avec la même évidence
que les choses, ou toute autre figuration artistique
ou non.

C. L. Popovici

22

23

## Le retour de Jawlensky

par Will Grohmann

Jawlensky: Gelbe Kirche, Variation 1916, 38 x 26

Malgré l'importance de son œuvre, c'est Jawlensky qui, parmi tous les peintres du « Blaue Reiter », a eu le moins de succès, de toute sa vie. Il ne trouvait ni collectionneurs, ni marchands d'art, rien que des amis qui, par ci par là, ačquačraient un de ses tableaux, à des prix fort réduits. Les revues d'art ne tenaient pas non plus compte de lui. Plus sa peinture devient silencieuse, plus augmente son isolement, et durant les dernières années de sa vie il n'était guère capable de travailler par suite d'une grave arthritis deformans.

Et aujourd'hui le revoilà tout à coup. En Allemagne, Wiesbaden fit une exposition, à Londres, la galerie Redfern, suivit Paris, l'Amérique s'y intéressé égaleil parait que le monde essaie de réparer ce qu'il a négligé — malheureusement trop tard, car Jawlensky mourut en 1941, à l'âge de soixante-dix-sept ans.

C'est uniquement à l'époque de « Neue Künstlervereinigung » et du « Blaue Reiter », à Munich, que Jawlensky a joué le rôle qui lui était dû. Ces années-là il était lié d'amitié avec Kandinsky qui, en même temps que lui, était venu de Russie se faire peintre à Munich, avec Marianne von Werefkin qu'il avait connue à Leningrad, avec Klee qui estimait Jawlensky, comme celui-ci aimait Klee, avec Marc, Macke et Gabrielle Münter qui, malgré son amitié pour Kandinsky, était artistiquement plus proche de Jawlensky.

Munich était en ce temps-là le vrai centre des arts. Grâce à Tschudi et à Thannhauser, des œuvres considérables de l'art européen y étaient venues. Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, et dans les expositions de « Künstlervereinigung » et du « Blaue Reiter » il y avait des Picasso, Braque, Delaunay, Rousseau, Rouault, Vlaminck, Derain et les peintres de « Brücke ». Le contact que trouvait Jawlensky avec Nolde était spécialement étroit, et il y avait en effet beaucoup de rapports entre les travaux des deux peintres. En lisant le journal de Nolde et en le comparant avec les notes qu'a prises Jawlensky, l'on s'étonne de la congérialité de leur mentalité. Telle phrase de Nolde pourrait aussi bien être écrite par Jawlensky: « Les tableaux sont des êtres vivants spirituels. En eux vit l'âme du peintre. » Et la manière de concevoir le religieux, lequel chez Jawlensky joue un rôle à partir de l'an 1918 est parlece chez tous les deux. Nolde a quinze années survécu à Jawlensky, il mourut récemment dans sa maison de Seebühl (Schleswig), quelques semaines avant la mort de Jawlensky, il lui avait envoyé une belle aquarelle « Les trois Mages ».

Ceux à qui était donné de voir l'époque du « Blaue Reiter » se rendaient compte de la concordance entre Jawlensky et Nolde, dans la violence de l'expression, dans l'exagération des contrastes du coloris, et dans la facture émaillée des couleurs. L'on s'étonnait du vif écho que trouvait Nolde chez le public allemand, et du peu d'approbation de Jawlensky. Fait d'autant plus étonnant que la peinture de Jawlensky avait un cachet plus européen, ayant des rapports avec Matisse

24

Jawlensky: Poésie des Morgens, 1931, 43 x 33

que Jawlensky avait vu à Paris et avec qui il avait eu de longues discussions.

Lors de cette visite, Jawlensky avait été convaincu d'être de pair avec les peintres français. Ce n'est que pendant la première guerre mondiale, lorsqu'il vivait en exil en Suisse (Saint-Prex sur le Lac Léman), qu'il s'avoua être un outsider, nulle part adaptable, sans appui du public. En 1916, Galka Scheyer vint le voir en Suisse, elle se chargea, en sa qualité de marchand d'art, de s'occuper de lui, de fonder, en 1924, le « Blaue Vier », et de s'efforcer, jusqu'à sa mort, à le propager en Amérique. Mais sans beaucoup de succès. De 1918 à 1921, Jawlensky vécut à Ascona où s'était établie M. von Werefkin au début de la guerre. Il y poursuivait les « Variations » de paysages peintes à Saint-Prex, et commençait la série des « Têtes de Saints ». En 1921, il alla s'établir à Wiesbaden où il vécut durant vingt années, dans la gêne, sans succès extérieur, jusqu'à ce que la mort le délivra de sa maladie.

Les Allemands trouvaient dans Jawlensky trop de monotonicie, trop peu de mouvement. L'Allemand attend de l'artiste des stades d'évolution bien visibles et une diversité des sujets. Il aurait bien pu trouver tout cela chez Jawlensky, non pas toutefois sans regarder au delà de l'apparence extérieure des Certes, le thème principal de Jawlensky est, et reste toujours, l'homme, la figure centrale est la face. Les extraordinaires natures mortes des premières années (où l'on pense à Bonnard) ne sont pas continuées. Une évolution pareille à celle des têtes serait plutôt à constater dans les paysages de 1900 à 1921.

Regardons d'abord les paysages. Il les commence sous l'influence de van Gogh, de même que les bustes de femmes, les touches rallongées et nerveuses, leur orientation sûre n'ont rien à voir avec les « Fauves ». Néanmoins, Jawlensky eut du succès avec les têtes et les paysages créés en Bretagne, au Salon d'Automne de 1905, où les « Fauves » montrèrent leurs œuvres pour la première fois. La série suivante de paysages est faite à Murnau où travaille Jawlensky à partir de 1908 durant les mois d'été, en compagnie de Kandinsky et de Gabrielle Münter. Ils s'inspirent tous des mêmes motifs, et vers 1910, l'analogie de la conception et de l'échelle des couleurs est évidente chez eux. Fin 1910, Kandinsky prend le chemin de l'abstraction, Jawlensky celui de la monumentalité. Il se limite à un minimum de formes et de couleurs, à un son fait de rouge, bleu ou jaune. A Saint-Prex, il continue les paysages, sous forme de « Variations ». Ce sont des modulations du même thème, savoir de la vue qu'il a depuis la fenêtre de sa chambre: à gauche un sapin, à droite des peupliers, un chemin, le clocher d'une église et c'est tout. Gradations de vert, rose, violet, brun, rien de plus. Sobriété qui est une antici-pation des têtes qu'il va bientôt peindre. Le sujet devient de plus en plus insignifiant, et la réalisation

25

se rapproche de l'abstraction. Nul autre que Jawlensky n'a, au vingtième siècle, peint des paysages qui, malgré leurs rapports avec la nature, aient une structure uniquement faite de modulations de couleurs et de formes.

La première des têtes est l' « Autoportrait », vers la fin de 1905; dans la mesure où les dates sont exactes, Jawlensky a réussi à rejoindre Matisse. Il y a de la maîtrise dans sa manière d'harmoniser les plans colorés sans renoncer aux caractéristiques d'une physionomie. Cependant, les recherches de Jawlensky tendent toujours plus à découvrir ce qui est derrière les choses, il est russe, et la face est pour lui plus qu'un hasard, l'expression ne l'intéresse guère, mais plus le maintien spirituel et la généralisation. Il peint une jeune fille aux pivoines (Pängstongen) en 1909, toile appelée longtemps « La Pentecôte ». Cra-moisi, et carmin rose avec le vert-bleu, incarnât d'un vert clair tel que l'employaient les Siennois. La per-sonne s'efface derrière l'idée. « La Plume blanche » est appelée le portrait de son ami le danseur Sacharow, ici encore c'est moins l'homme qu'il peint que l'ara-besque d'une passion. La deuxième version qu'il en a faite en 1913 n'a rien à voir avec la physionomie du premier portrait, c'est plutôt une tête d'apôtre. Les têtes de 1912 et de 1913 sont des manifestations d'un certain état d'esprit et d'amé, la «Danseuse espagnola», la «Femme au turban», les «Yeux foncés», la «Sici-lienne ». Jawlensky accentue la structure, le contour, l'harmonie des détails, et reproche tout de même à ces réalisations de contenir trop d'éléments fortuits et même sensuels. Le destin l'aide à abrêcher son chemin, la guerre met fin à sa vie habituelle, le sépa-rant de ses amis, du milieu artistique qu'il avait com-mencé à aimer. A Saint-Prex, Jawlensky prend un nouvel élan.

Les têtes deviennent de plus en plus abstraites per-dant tout ce qui pourrait en faire des portraits. Elles se transforment en symboles, et tels sont leurs titres: « Aurore », « Contemplation intérieure », « Lumière et Obscurité », et la où il y a des allusions au domaine de la religion, Jawlensky les appelle « Face au Sau-veur » ou « Dimanche de Pâques ». La devise de Jawlensky est maintenant « l'art c'est Dieu devenu invisible ». Peu de temps avant sa mort, il écrit au peintre et prêtre Wilibald Varkade, qu'il avait connu à Munich en 1906: « Je devais peindre ce qui vivait ouge dans mon âme. Dans ma poitrine, je sentais un orgue qu'il fallait faire rsonner. Le grand art ne peut naître que basé sur le sentiment humain. »

Lorsque ses mains ne peuvent plus tenir le pinceau, Jawlensky le fiche à sa main déformée, et durant trois années il peint ses « Méditations », toujours et de nouveau la tête du Sauveur, avec peu de lignes et de rares couleurs, une monotonie qui pourtant n'empêche pas la luminosité intérieure. Les couleurs qu'il adorait sont maintenant comme cachées derrière

un grillage, et s'accordent invisiblement avec l'ensemble.

Voilà la fin, c'est l'icone; enfant Jawlensky l'avait connue à Moscou, pour l'oublier plus tard. Après soixante-dix ans elle reparait, faisant de Jawlensky un peintre qui, après maints détours, retrouve l'ingénuité de l'art et de l'idée. Une destinée russe qui se réalisait dans l'Europe occidentale. Quel malheur pour Jawlensky d'avoir à tout jamais été séparé de sa patrie, quelle perte pour l'art russe qui aurait égalé l'art occidental, avec les Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Malevich, Pevsner, Gabo, Chagall et bien d'autres.

Will Grohmann.

(Exposition Galerie Friker juin.)

Jawlensky: Méditation IV, 25 x 18, 1937

26

# Informations

## Un prix mondial de peinture

La fondation Salomon R. Guggenheim de New York annonce qu'un prix de dix mille dollars, soit d'environ trois millions cinq cent mille francs sera attribué tous les deux ans à la meilleure peinture contemporaine. Le lauréat sera désigné par un jury international choisi par la fondation, avec l'aide des trois organisations reliées à l'Unesco: Conseil international des Musées, Association internationale des Critiques d'Art et Association internationale des Arts Plastiques.

En outre, seize prix nationaux de 1.000 dollars, soit 350.000 francs chacun, récompenseront les meilleures œuvres de seize pays où les trois organisations ont en même temps créé des sections nationales, c'est-à-dire l'Autriche, la Belgique, la Pologne, le Brésil, le Dan-mark, l'Egypte, la France, l'Italie, le Japon, les Pys-Bas, le Portugal, la Suède, la Suisse, le Royaume-Uni, les États-Unis d'Amérique et la Youngoslavie. En effet, c'est par l'intermédiaire de leurs sections nationales que les trois organisations se chargeront de réunir des jurys pour la sélection des meilleures peintures.

Trois prix supplémentaires de mille dollars sont prévus pour les peintres dont les pays ne sont pas représentés à ces organisations ou bien ne veulent pas concourir dans leur patrie d'origine, à la condition que le jury accepte leurs justifications. Ces trois ders-niés prix seront appelés continentaux pour les distinguer de seize prix nationaux et du Grand Prix international.

Les tableaux primés dans chaque pays ou jury international seront réunis dans pour se soumet au jury international avec quatre toiles supplémentaires par pays. Les jurys nationaux décideront si les tableaux peuvent être de cinq artistes différents ou d'un seul peintre. Le Grand Prix ne sera pas nécessairement attribué à un gagnant des prix nationaux ou continentaux. Tous les artistes peuvent concourir pour ces divers prix à la condition d'avoir peint les œuvres qu'ils présenterent dans les trois ans qui précèdent l'attribution du prix et de les avoir exposées au public au cours des deux dernières années.

## Festival de l'Art d'avant-garde

Du 4 au 14 août aura lieu à Marseille, à la Cité Radieuse, un Festival d'avant-garde; arts plastiques, cinéma, musique, ballets, théâtre. L'exposition de peinture et sculpture dont le vernissage aura lieu le 4 août sera précédée d'une conférence de Michel Ragon à qui a été confiée l'organisation de cette exposition qui comprend les artistes suivants, représentant les plus diverses tendances de l'art d'avant-garde: Stael, Lanskoy, Tal-Coat, Vieira da Silva Polia-koff, Atlan, Singier, Schneider, Soulages, Manessier, Hartung, Devrolle, Le Moal, Fautrier, Parmi les plus jeunes: Francis, Laponjade, Loubehansky, Degottex,

Hantaï, Zack, Childs, Arnal, Laubiès, Koenig, Tsingos, Karskaya, Serpan, Tinguely, Soto, Agam, Malina, Isou, Lemaître, Pomerand, Yves, Chastenet, Parmi les sculpteurs: Gilioli, Stahly, Hajdu, Martin, Martha Pan, César.

# Les expositions

## A l'étranger

### ALLEMAGNE

Berlin. — Kunstantiquariat Wasmuth: Beate Hilbeck (mai).

Frankfurt. — Zimmergalerie Franck: Brüning. Höhme, Gaul, Stöckl, Zangs.

Iserlohn. — Haus der Heimat: Irgmart Wessel-Zum-loh.

Leverkusen. — Städtiches Museum: Robert Delaunay. Mannheim. — Galerie Inge Ahlers: Epple (Juin); Müller-Huschmid (juillet).

Munich. — Galerie Otto Stangl: Bott et Wols (juin).

Stuttgart. — Staatsgalerie: Max Ackermann.

### AUTRICHE

Vienna. — Galerie Wüthle: Vedova.

### BELGIQUE

Bruxelles. — Galerie Saint-Laurent: Défense du Petit Format.

### ESPAGNE

Madrid. — Galerie Clan: Navarro.

### ETATS-UNIS

Boston. — Long Wharf Studios: Bellegarde.

New York. — Meltzer Gallery: L'aquarelle contemporaine aux Etats-Unis.

### ITALIE

Florence. — Galerie Numero: Duncan (avril); Gina Ionesco (mai).

Milan. — Galerie Apollinaire: Maitres et jeunes peintres d'aujourd'hui.

Galerie Del Fiorè: John Rood.

Galerie del Naviglio: Spazialismo.

Venise. — Galerie Bevilaqua la Masa: Finzi.

### PAYS-BAS

Schiedam. — Stedelijk Museum: Corneille.

Rotterdam. — 't Venster: Gustav Beek.

### SUISSE

Ascona. — Galerie La Citadella: Helbig, Dalvit, Moser, Reichel, Bott, Serheli, Valenti, Maillet, Stäger, Beer, Chinn (juin); Fichet et Meystre (juillet).

Bâle. — Galerie d'art moderne: Art d'aujourd'hui.

Galerie Beveler: Abstrakte Maler.

Berne. — Kunsthalle; Giacometti.

Gutekamp et Klipstein: Fedier. Lansanne. — Galerie L'entraete: Wenger (juin); Lau-bies, Wertmann (juillet).

Zurich. — Galerie Chichio Haller: Peintres de l'Ecole de Paris.

Galerie Palette: Leppien.

27

La sculpture actuelle dans
l'école de Paris

par Herta Wescher

Dodeigne : Figure, pierre

La fréquence des expositions de sculptures qui se suivirent au cours des mois passés, s'est soldée par résultat assez mince: elles ont apporté quelques confirmations incévitables, quelques connaissances nouvelles, mais, au fond, peu de découvertes exceptionnelles. La prolifération des salons a sans doute fait tort à chacun d'eux: les œuvres y ont été représentées un peu au hasard et elles ont souvent été privées de résonance par suite de l'indécision des tendances.

Nous regrettons que le Salon des Réalités Nouvelles n'y ait pas fait exception. Alors que cette année, ce Salon renouvelé se distinguait par le choix et par l'accrochage des peintures, dans la salle des sculptures, au contraire, les mauvaises conditions des murs et d'éclairage également froids, défavorisaient comme toujours la présentation. Dans l'encombrement habituel, les œuvres frappantes restaient en petite minorerité. Qu'en de tels lieux Arp tienne toujours une place prédominante, n'est pas flatteur pour la jeune génération qui ne se faisait pas trop remarquer. Parmi elle, Lipsi a trouvé, aujourd'hui un style personnel très sûr en mûrissant l'abstraction lente et progressive de ses sujets. Il ne fait aucune violence à la pierre, mais lui impose prudemment les contours voulus. « Le mur de la forêt », exposé aux Réalités Nouvelles, se présente comme un bloc massif, divise en grands plans très souplement modelés, aux incisions précises inspirées par le thème. Gilioli avait montré, avant le Salon, à la Galerie Edouard Loeb, un choix d'œuvres de petits formats, fruits évidents d'un moment de révision qui visait à clarifier plutôt certaines conceptions qu'à attaquer des problèmes nouveaux. C'étaient des bronzes et des pierres très dépouillés dont les sujets se limitaient au jeu subtil de parties planes et convexes, les lignes d'intersection qui marquaient la surface trouvant leur correspondance dans le développement interne du volume. Après ces œuvres presque trop parfaites, on saluait dans ce Salon la conception nouvelle d'une sculpture en deux pièces, aux mouvements horizontaux et verticaux confrontés, éveillant notre imagination par de vagues réminiscences d'un bateau et d'une voile, et situant cette œuvre dans le vaste domaine du significatif. La sculpture en terre cuite de Penalba, à son côté, était propre à mystifier le spectateur: « l'ancêtre-papillon » rappelait un calice de fleu s'ouvrant avec une certaine suggestion érotique. Penalba a développé son langage plastique, devenu un des plus personnels de tous les jeunes de l'Ecole de Paris, en une entente secrète avec la nature, aux inspirations de laquelle elle donne un sens architektural prononcé; d'où son grêle géant, en bloc de ciment, qui s'élevait dans le parc du Musée Rodin. Encore, dans le Salon des R.N. se signalait la curieuse sculpture en fer de Takis: poignées d'épée aux longues lames d'acier, enseignes martiales d'un sens perdu.

La sculpture de Martha Pan, présentée au Salon, était mal choisie pour donner une idée de son art, alors que son exposition à la Galerie Arnaud comptait

28

Hepworth : Configuration (Phira), bois, 1955

parmi les plus belles surprises de cette année. Quand, récemment, j'ai lu qu'un prix serait accordé à l'artiste le moins conformiste, j'aurais spontanément voulu proposer son nom, car son œuvre révèle pour moi une rare indépendance d'esprit, alliée à une maîtrise du métier aussi étonnante. Ses sculptures naissent d'une vitalité profonde, d'une foi égale dans les forces créatrices de la nature et de l'homme, et c'est aux deux qu'elle fait appel dans ses créations. Elle comence par déterminer les proportions exactes de la sculpture projettée, au moyen de dessins d'architecte les plus sobres, pour terminer en travaillant les surfaces de la manière la plus sensible, mettant en valeur la matière spéciale qu'elle a sous ses mains. Les bois durs sont ses préférés; ils lui inspirent des œuvres d'imagination dont la plus curieuse est peut être cette grande mâchoire aux deux bras tournant, se dépliant et s'emboîtant dans une même intensité. Nombreuses sont ses sculptures composées d'éléments séparés, dont chacun possède sa forme propre, mais qui ne trouvent leur sens complet que dans leur rapprochement. Il y a des œuvres qui, en état fermé, présentent des volumes simplifiés et révèlent leur richesse interne aussiôt qu'on les ouvre, d'autres dont les composantes seules rappellent des corps stércométriques et se transforment en être vivant quand on les ajoute: toutes correspondent à l'intérêt d'une artiste pour un monde en constante évolution.

Il y a une certaine parenté d'esprit entre Martha Pan et Stahly qui, lui aussi, cherche des solutions hors de toutes les recettes éprouvées. Ses sculptures faites dans une même année sont d'une diversité qui paraîtrait troublante si l'on ne sentait pas toujours la même recherche pour exploiter toute la richesse

Hajdu : Cuivre martelé

29

Penalba:
L'ancêtre papillon
terre cuite

chent à exprimer avec le même vocabulaire non-
figuratif les thèmes les plus vastes et les plus riches
de tous les domaines spirituels. Un des premiers pas
vers cette nouvelle liberté d'expression a été l'abolir-
tion de l'ordre statique, remplacé par des œuvres d'un
sens dynamique en expansion. Pour la sculpture, il
s'agissait plus spécialement de détruire le volume
massif, d'ouvrir le bloc pour laisser l'espace entrer
en fonction active.

Les recherches concentrées sur cet élargissement
spatial unissaient les sculpteurs qui, au début de cette
saison, exposaient chez Denise René. Dans l'ensemble,
cette exposition a laissé une impression assez peu
vivante, peut-être due au fait que le genre des parti-
cipants est bien connu et n'a que fort peu évolué
dans la plupart des cas. Les œuvres de Descombin
répètent, d'une manière raffinée mais assez schéma-
tique, les propos bien plus savants des constructivistes
russes, celles de Rivera souffrent d'une allure trop
élégante et précieuse. Les constructions de fer de
Jacobsen paraissent de plus en plus séches ; l'imagi-
nation curieuse qu'en arrivant à Paris il apportait de
son pays, s'est étouffée dans une atmosphere mal
appropriée à sa mentalité. Les constructions spatio-
dynamiques de Schoeffer, conçues pour se développer
librement, mises en rotation et animées de lumières
alternantes, en des architectures de dimensions
immenses, deviennent plutôt monotones en tournant
dans le coin d'une salle d'exposition trop remplie.
D'autre part, sa tour sémaphore, exposée en plein
air à Bagatelle, réussissait à nous convaincre par sa
seule silhouette, sans l'appui de procédés mécaniques.
En attendant ses prochaines sculptures volantes, dont
il nous a entretenus, signalons entre temps les « mobi-
les », type modèle des sculptures spatiales : celui
d'Anthoons à l'exposition « Divergences », et ceux de
Shigeo, parents nobles, un peu dégénérés de la famille
Calder, présentés chez Creuze. Faits de matériaux
plaisants très divers, papiers de soie, cellophanes,
feuilles métalliques, petites boules colorées, etc., le
tout fixé aux fils et aux bâtons les plus minces, ces
baseules aériennes se prétent à des jeux fascinants,
leurs multiples éléments tournant, montant et desen-
dant à la fois.

L'exposition particulière de Bloc, suivant à la Gale-
rie Denise René celle du groupe abstrait, prouvait
de nouveau la richesse d'idées qui conduit cet artiste
d'une solution à l'autre. Se basant sur la diversité des
matières : marbre noir, jaune et blanc, pierres mates
et polies, il en exprime des thèmes dépouillés, de mou-
vements opposés et enlacés, de volumes creuses et
saillants, bravant l'équilibre interne parfois par les
extensions les plus audacieuses. Entreprises dans un
but purement esthétique, que souligne l'exécution
d'une perfection inhumaine, les œuvres de Bloc
s'adaptent parfaitement au style clairement disposé
de l'architecture moderne, où lui-même leur choisit
leur place, mais elles peuvent obtenir, en des agran-

dissements appropriés, une signification monumentale,
tel le grand plâtre placé à l'horizon du pare de Baga-
telle.

Toujours chez Denise René, les deux sculptures de
Barbar Hepworth faisaient un peu oiseaux de pas-
sage, moins à cause du passeport de l'artiste, que par
une imagination qui n'a pas sa pareille dans ce cadre
réservé. Dans d'éranges coquilles enfermant le vide,
sur lequel se tendent de fins faireceaux de cordes,
l'abstraction s'impregne d'une imperceptible touche
de vie. Chez elle, la force et la tendresse se mêlent
dans la maîtrise de la matière, soit le bois comme ici,
soit la pierre comme dans l'autre sculpture, exposée
au Musée Rodin, et qui se distinguait de son entourage
par la même puissance souveraine.

Lardera, enfin, s'écartait également de la ligne de
ce groupe, instant sur le côté expressif de ses cons-
tructions de fer, sur lesquelles son exposition parti-
culière chez Warren nous a renseigné plus amplement.
Dans une technique volontairement négligée, ne
cachant ni les rudesses du souillage ni les traces du
feu, le caractère austère, tragique de ses œuvres paraît
parfois presque trop souligné. Mais nous sentons
l'homme inquiet dans ces « cathédrales de doulcours »,
s'éclevant sur un seul pilier fragile, dans ses murs
fragmentaires encerclant le vide, dans ces plaques
dentelées et trouées qui jaillissent dans l'espace
comme des signaux d'alarme. Mais sa dernière initia-
tive, d'intercaler dans ses tôle de fer et de cuivre des
taches de couleurs, en forme de mosaïque, ne me
semble pas heureuse, le contraste des surfaces pré-
cieuses et pauvres trouble l'écho plus discret qu'évoque
la seule lumière jouant sur le métal sans éclat.

Bloc : Modèle de bronze pour agrandissement de la sculpture

Stahly : Sculpture photo Marc Vaux

33

Henri Bénézit
œuvres des XIXe et XXe siècles

20 rue Miromesnil, Paris 8, Anjou 54-56

Atlan, Borès, Chapoval, Garbell,
Gondouin, Hayden, Helman,
Herbin, Janson, Lanskoy,
A. Masson, Pichette, Schaar,
Tal Coat, Tsingos, Vilato

Galerie Denise René

124 rue la Boétie, Paris 8, Elysées 93-17

Arp, Le Corbusier, Herbin, Bloc,
Deyrolle, Jacobsen, Vasarely
Mortensen, Magnelli, Bærtling,
Schoffer, Agam, Soto, Tinguely

Galerie Jeanne Bucher

9 ter boulevard du Montparnasse, Paris 6
Ségur 64-32

Chelimsky, Nallard, Moser,
Aguayo, Gillet, Bissière, Hajdu,
Reichel, Bertholle, Szenes,
Viera da Silva

Galerie Arnaud

34 rue du Four, Paris 6, Littré 40-26

Divergences 4

Anthoons, Barré, Bertrand, Corneille,
Carrade, Citron, Coppel, Dahmen, Deyrolle,
Downing, Dumitresco, Feito, Flchet,
Gauthier, Gilioli, Gillet, Gœbel, Guitet,
Istrati, Kaufmann, Kalinowski, Karskaya,
Koenig, Lago, Laubiès, Moser, Pan,
Panafieu, Pink, Stahly, Staritsky, Tanaka,
Tryggvadottir, van Haardt, Wessel

juillet, août, septembre

Novembre-Décembre:
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

Janvier-Février 1957:
Stedelijk Museum, Schiedam

Le Directeur-Gérant: J.R. Arnaud

Imprimerie Hofer, 2 rue des Lyonnais, Paris 5, Port-Royal 66-32

Prix: 360 francs

The Universe Sculpture Series is edited by Prof. A. M. Hammacher

Copyright 1959 in the Netherlands by Allert de Lange, Amsterdam
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 59-10160
Typography and cover Otto Treumann, GKf, AGI
Printed in the Netherlands by H. Veenman & Zonen N.V., Wageningen

Today it is almost impossible to talk about a sculptor without first complaining of what little
recognition sculpture receives these days. Undoubtedly some attention is occasionally paid to
this art, but it is entirely platonic and felt as a moral obligation. One does not really like it. Its
place is a contended one everywhere: in private collections, in museums, in public squares,
even when less revolutionary statues are concerned. What then are we to assert about those
works of which – in spite of everything – one will at some later date say that they are most
representative for our age? Modern art is a neglected art and only a minority uses its idiom.
In these circumstances it is small wonder that this art, especially when understood as a conquest,
oftens compels the few artists to live on mere heroism, as was the case with Gonzalez.

Fortunately this general indifference in regard to sculpture does not discourage in advance
young people who believe in it. But it does not encourage them either. However it may be, it
does not prove anywhere that at the beginning of his career Gonzalez ever wondered whether
the art he was going to practice should ever be encouraged or not! Such was not his nature.
Yet, during his lifetime, he fell victim to the usual aversion on the part of the public. An
established fact is that this modest and shy man did not attempt to draw the attention of his
contemporaries to his work. But this makes no difference to the injustice he experienced. His
body of work is only now – long after his death – beginning to wear down a traditional resist-
ance.

This monograph is the first devoted to Gonzalez. A fact which by no means belittles the
merits of the catalogue issued by the Municipal Museum of Amsterdam – chief editor
Mr. W. Sandberg – on the occasion of the Commemorative Exhibition of 1955.

At an age when others still go to school, Gonzalez worked in the studio of his father, who was
both goldsmith and sculptor. His brother Joan worked with him and they soon became expert
metalworkers. They even exhibited at Chicago and Barcelona and were awarded a gold medal.
The two brothers did not, however, wish to devote themselves to the craft of metal-working,
however exciting it was to them. They attended evening-classes at the School of Art at Barce-
lona. Joan was a painter and sculptor till 1908, the year of his premature death. Julio, in spite
of the fact that he excelled in making metal reliefs, had for years cherished the desire of be-
coming a painter.

An important event in the life of young Julio Gonzalez was undoubtedly the family's removal to Paris, where he again found Picasso, whose acquaintance he had made at Barcelona, and where he made friends with such outstanding men as Manolo the sculptor, Max Jacob the poet and Maurice Raynal the art critic.

He also met the future representatives of modern thought in the field of art. But this was in
1900. Undoubtedly Gonzalez's admiration goes out to Puvis de Chavannes and Degas, and his

painting is neither influenced by Cézanne, nor by Gauguin or Van Gogh. As a matter of fact it
is strange, that till 1927 and even in the few pictures he made afterwards Gonzalez as painter
remained untouched by avant-garde movements. He remained exceptionally moderate, com-
posed his paintings carefully, was an accurate drawer but he never tried to break away from the
very traditional figurative principles.

His first years in Paris were fertile in a spiritual sense. Drawings and pastels were created, the
one after the other. His experience as a craftsman acquired in his father's studio stood him in
stead when sculpting. The figures he then made were in hammered metal.

His brother's death in 1908 threw him entirely out of gear. For many months he could not
work. When finally he started, the darkest and longest period in his career set in. It was going
to last twenty years, without material or artistic prospects. He sought in vain. He felt incapable
of ever achieving anything. He did not see anybody apart from an occasional meeting with
Brancusi or Picasso, which meetings remained unfruitful. Only in 1932 he again came into
contact with avant-garde circles. In this critical period sculptures of a melancholy and uncom-
municative character were created, which form a striking contrast with the cheerful conception
and realization, which characterize Gonzalez after 1927.

The mask Tia Lola from 1912, is worked out lightly and precisely, and pervaded with an inward restlessness which is even perceptible in its fine technique. The plasticity of the face, even more than its pose, reveals the artist's inner world.

Like the great mystics in their moments of great commotion, Gonzalez lived through a spiritual
crisis. His faith began to waver. Without realizing it he fathomed its secrets.

At last, in 1927-1929, the veil was lifted (it is hard to attach exact dates to the events in his career and to his creative work). From then on the artist fully devoted himself to sculpting.

The arabesque of his *Nude* of 1929 is still of a naturalist style. But the silhouette detaches itself from the background and creates a space which is undoubtedly a plane but full of energy and of a strong compactness.

In his *Still Life* (1929, Collection Magnelli) the volume of the bottle is absorbed by the plane silhouette of the jar. The volume is not really there, but it is indicated by a hollow, bordered at one side, hence a negative form. In terms of sculpture Gonzalez expressed the principles of cubist painting. His *Woman with Broom* shows another aspect of his investigations. The body is composed of broad, simplified masses. The planes of the dress fall down and are continued in those of the broom. With static lines pressing down the statue on its sole, a dynamic line rises upwards along the broom-stick, continues in the left arm and finally develops into an interplay of curves and triangles formed by the head and the right arm. The head and the arm are indicated by a hollow to one side. Its form is determined by a shadow.

The Kiss (1930), two heads that unite, points at a new orientation: the utmost simplification of masses in a conception closely related to synthetic cubism. A subtle connection of surfaces add linear curves to the spatial meaning. This is a thought guided by an exquisite expert feeling thus forming a close composition.

The *Head with Aureole* of 1932 solves the same problem in a simpler way.

Some works show clearly how Gonzalez's sculpture develops with the aid of applied cubist discipline. It frees itself from many impediments and one realizes how free Gonzalez must have felt. His creative power manifests itself, expands and develops further. It should be noted that iron had been his new material since 1927.

'Designing and drawing in space with new means, utilizing space and mould it as if it were a novel material, that is what I am pursuing'. This quotation explains Gonzalez's motives. He rises above cubism. In a range of statues he worked with materialized lines; iron enables him to do so. He built refined architectures of a great elegance in an elliptic style. Gonzalez no longer even suggested masses; he reduced them to lines in which their essence is contained. This conception led to: *The Prayer* (1932), *Motherhood* (1933), *Woman combing herself* (1933), sculptures imbued with space, syntheses lending a wonderful power of expression and exceptional plasticity to what they represent.

Let us halt here. In 1933 Gonzalez was 57 years old. Only in the latter four years did the world of forms disclose itself to him. It must emphatically be stated that a man of fifty at last knew how to proceed, — on a road hitherto followed by no one. Certainly he was not the first to use this material, neither was he a pioneer in treating space as an integral part of a sculpture. But great inventive minds do not necessarily have to find their own means. Where Gonzalez is original in both is the very personal purpose for which he uses his means and in the new power of plasticity he gives to figurative sculpture.

The history of plastic arts since impressionism, freed from every movement which is nothing but nostalgic or prosaic evocations of the past, is to us a long series of efforts to realize pure abstract art, that is to say, an art which no longer portrays the outward appearances of a visible world. We find this development with all the artists living in that period. Hence our surprise when a painter or sculptor who has been through all the stages from figurative to abstract art, does not proceed to the last stage which would signify the end of the journey. Gonzalez never took that last step. He always leaned back on figurative art.

It is only the measure to which he transposed the visible world which varied. Gonzalez even became a fervent opponent to complete abstract art. When, however, in 1933 Gonzalez discovered the value of extremely transposed figurative expression, he did not recede, but saw in it another means of development. A new means of expression was added. Never would he

abide by one way of expressing himself between 1933 and 1940. He would always move between
a great transposition and a realism approaching its model.

Nevertheless it must be acknowledged that Gonzalez has gone rather far in the orchestration
of the possibilities discovered by him.

His Dancer called 'à la palette' (1933) is rather more than a transposition. Not only have the
elements belonging to a visible world been transformed into simplified realizations of their lines
of force, but a synthesis has been created which is only a weak reminder of figurative art.
This play became 'dangerous'. But Gonzalez knew where he stood and consistently steered
clear of what one might call temptation. In fact he always remained faithful to his principles and
it is admirable to note how steadfast a man he was.

A few Heads may elaborate this; the *Little Head* (1933), silver (8 in. high), is a complex form which immediately and intensely strikes us as a rhythmical whole. From a solid and terse pedestal rises in a separate plane a curve ending in a few thick, powerful and lyrical hairs, whereas in the opposite direction a hollow cone projects.

The *Little Head* (1934) in silver, from the Hartung collection, appears as a beautiful plant, frail and strong at the same time, elegant and young. It is a kind of symbol of freshness rather than a head. The *Head with Mirror* (1934) is, in spite of its modest size (11 in.), one of the strongest works of Gonzalez. For years I have seen this statuette again and again without ever surmising it was meant to be a head. This being confronted with opposed movements occurred to me as so logical and so convincing, that I never once thought of a figurative starting-point. No doubt I was wrong. But I can only honestly state what were then my first and strongest impressions. In spite of all his explorations in the field of free figurativeness Gonzalez did not allow himself to be influenced solely by his linear principles. He returned to the full forms, to a real and not to a suggested volume. But within these volumes quite different plastic forces are hidden than before. The intensity of expression is much stronger here. It profits clearly by the experiences gained from linear figures. The masses of the *Reclining Figure* (1934) possess both nerves and strength. The *Sitting Woman* on the other hand tries to convey to us an abrupt impression of mass and weight.

The masses unite with the materialized lines in one of the most exciting masterpieces of Gonzalez: the *Woman, combing her hair* (1936, Museum of Modern Art, New York).
Through their vertical and curved lines, which are both imperative and luxuriant, the full forms radiate a majesty to which a linear structure adds a gay enchantment.

In the same year, 1936, another masterpiece is created: *The Woman with Mirror* (7 ft. 2 in. high).
It is a beautiful synthesis in which all the possibilities the artist opened to himself find their
expression. Solid curved lines, strong straight linear elements, hollow and full volumes,

everything contributes to the harmony and balance of this exceptional sculpture. It proves that
Gonzalez was not only talented in regard to the creation of small-size works of art, but that he
could work in a monumental style equally successfully. To the series of strongly transposed
works also belong the figures, called *La grande faucille* 1936, *Standing Woman* and *Standing Man*,
called 'Gothic' (1937). Very sober and calculated works, with a great uniformity of mood.
Especially the last work is most typical of the three. It represents the right side of a man and
yet a complete man's figure is suggested, with its vertical and horizontal aspects, its will-power
and strong alliance with the soil, its repressed dynamic.

Here Gonzalez attained his classical height; the restriction of means leads the force of expres-
sion to its summit.

But now this versatile personality was showing a new aspect which already made itself felt in
*Head with Mirror* of 1934, in *Woman combing herself and Woman with Mirror* of 1936. In the ver-
sions of *Cactus Man* (1939-1940) Gonzalez introduced himself as a sculptor of baroque. We
already discerned in his previous works a strong predeliction for beautiful curves and counter-
curves. Gonzalez now showed another leaning, already perceptible in some statues, a certain
picturesqueness. And once more we must admire his mastery.

Baroque is never far away from decline and bad taste. With the numerous beautiful works of
Roman art from the beginning of the seventeenth century in several countries of Europe and
Central and South America we see with a certain anxiety how the architect, the painter or the
sculptor suddenly passes on to the intolerable. At the very last moment they save their faces,
proud of their achievements and very happy about their narrow escape.

Gonzalez's attitude is not so defiant. The picturesque effect he attained by means of nails with
his two *Cactus-men*, does not spring from the shallow reasoning of wishing to surprise us, but
from the sentimental and plastic need of expression within him. Gonzalez used here baroque
means, baroque expressions, but as a classicist with a very special sense of exact measurements.
The two versions of the *Cactus-man* are the last sculptures of Gonzalez in the series of highly
transformed figurative representations. In exploring the domain of figurativeness he always
remained close to the models. This realistic aspect of Gonzalez's works may point at a less
easily recognizable genius, but a little attentiveness suffices to establish almost at once that
this modesty detracts nothing from his personality.

The *Torso* of 1936 stands out through its subtle interplay of shades, the sensitive composition
of the materialized planes and through a refined impression of weight and perfection.

An 'old republican', Gonzalez is severely shocked by the ordeal Spain went through in the
year 1936. Like his whole family, parents and grandparents he is a left-wing man. But his nature
is too pessimistic to believe in the effects of no matter what political action. He does not belong

to any party. Yet the civil war afflicted him deeply. He dedicates one of his finest pictures to the Catalonian woman, to a farmer's wife, to the wife of a humble worker: the *Standing Montserrat figure*, now the property of the Amsterdam Municipal Museum. This figure has frequently been reproduced. Other versions of this theme are less well-known.

Unforgettable is nevertheless the *Mask crying Montserrat*, so simple in spite of its force of expression. One is reminded of the greatness of certain Negro masks, although this sculpture has nothing in common with it, the world war deeply hurt the highly-strung man Gonzalez was. The impossibility of finding the indispensable material prevented him from working with iron. He tried plaster again, but dreamed of what he was going to realize after the war.

Meanwhile he produced drawings which are among his finest. We admire his decisive lines, the beautiful soft grey and the wealth of inspiration. They belong to the most important items of Gonzalez's body of work. They are a kind of last will.

With his family he fled to Le Lot, but returned with his wife to occupied Paris. A fortunate event, known to nobody, caused him to write to his daughter in unoccupied France in March 1942: 'Fortune is beginning to smile at me'.

Three days after he died from a heart-attack.

This man loved family-life. He praised friendship, and preferred to live in quiet surroundings. He divided his life between his cottage at Arcueil and his country-home at Monthyon, between his work in the studio and his rural pleasures. He knew very well what tendencies there were in the world of plastic arts and especially the avant-garde movement. But he insisted on listening to his inward voice and on proceeding at the pace which suited him best. This explains why Gonzalez did not belong to any group. It is not surprising that his work and development stand aside of the present movements. Gonzalez, who has for years been a friend of Picasso's, the leading cubist, did not become a cubist in the period of cubism, but only in 1927. And he was not an abstract artist in spite of the abstract art his friends created. Stubbornly he followed the path of figurativeness and everything suggests that he did so fully aware of his potentialities, of the great urge of his temper and the demands of his genius.

As Klee did in painting, Gonzalez proved in sculpture that figurativeness has not necessarily had its final say. At a time when figurative art began to show many signs of exhaustion, only a great artist like Gonzalez could satisfactorily prove this.
And it is no mean achievement.

## From the notes left by Julio Gonzalez

Designing and drawing in space with new means, utilizing it and moulding it as if it were a novel material, that is what I am pursuing. Only the spire of a cathedral can show us that point in Heaven, where our soul may live.

In the unrest of the night the stars are to us points of hope in the skies. These points in infinity have been the forerunners of the new art: Signs in space.

The significance of the problem to be solved is not merely the creation of a harmonic work, a fully balanced whole. No! Its solution lies in the union of matter and space, of realistic and imaginary forms, denoted by fixed points or holes. These forms must flow into each other and must be inseparable like body and soul.

The synthetic transformations of material forms, of colors, light, piercings, the absence of compact planes, convey to the work of art a mysterious, fantastic, indeed a diabolical aspect. In transposing the natural forms and infusing a new spirit into them, the artist works with deifying space.

Centuries ago the Iron Age began, unfortunately, to create arms, among which some were even beautiful. To-day it enables us to build bridges, factories, railways...

It is high time that this material stops being murderous or being merely subservient to a mechanized science: the gate has now been opened wide so that it may penetrate into the Realm of Art, to be hammered and moulded by the peaceful hands of the artist.

## Biography

Julio Gonzalez was born a Catalanian at Barcelona on September 21st, 1876, where his father and grandfather were master-goldsmiths.

In his father's workshop he learned the trade of a goldsmith. In 1900 he and his family emigrated to Paris. He painted and made drawings, but produced few sculptures.

1908 His brother Joan died.

1927-29 He painted less and devoted himself mainly to the plastic arts.

1932-35 He created sculptures in which space is an integral part.

1937 In his sculptures he introduced full as well as light forms.

1940 The war prevented him from sculpting.

Drawings were produced.

1942 He started working in plaster. He created two sculptures, the one big and realistic, the other small and strongly transposed.

On March 27th, 1942, he died unexpectedly at Arceuil near Paris.

## Bibliography

Catalogue de l'exposition à la Galerie Le Centaure, Brussels, May 1931.

Luis Fernandez: *El escultor Gonzalez* in A.C., Barcelona, 1932, vol. 5, nr. 2.

Ricardo Pérez Alfonseca: *Julio Gonzalez*, Madrid, Editorial 'Cartillas', 1934.

Maurice Raynal: *Julio Gonzalez*. Catalogue de l'exposition à la Galerie Percier, Paris, April-May 1934.

Léon Degand: *Un méconnu volontaire: Julio Gonzalez*. In *Juin*, 6th October 1946, Paris.

Jean Cassou: *Julio Gonzalez*. In *Cahiers d'art*, 1947.

Léon Degand: *Julio Gonzalez*. In Art d'aujourd'hui, January 1950, 1st series nr. 6.

Catalogue de la rétrospective au Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris, February-March 1952.

Bruguière: *Julio Gonzalez*. In *Cahiers d'Art*, 1952.

Andrew Carnduff Ritchie: in *Sculpture of the Twentieth Century*, p. 29-31.

Ed. Museum of Modern Art, New-York, 1952.

Charles Estienne: *Un grand sculpteur: Gonzalez*. In *Observateur*, 1st. February 1952, Paris.

Alexandre Klerx: *Julio Gonzalez, ouvrier du fer*. In *Beaux Arts*, Brussels, 15th February 1952.

Eduard Trier: in *Moderne Plastik, Büchergilde Gutenberg*, Frankfurt a. Main, 1953.

Catalogue de la rétrospective au Musée Municipal d'Amsterdam, April-May 1955, and in Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, May-June 1955.

Juan Eduardo Cirlot: *Julio Gonzalez*, in *Goya*, Madrid, nr. 4, 1955.

Jorge Romero Brest: *Julio Gonzalez*, in *Les sculpteurs célèbres*, éd. Mazenod, Lausanne, 1955.

R.V.Gindertael: *Julio Gonzalez*, in *Beaux-Arts*, Brussels, 20 May 1955.

Catalogue de la rétrospective au Musée des Beaux-Arts de La Chaux-de-Fonds (Société des Amis des Arts) August-September 1955.

JULIO GONZALEZ

1876 Born in Barcelona, Spain on September 21. Father, Concordio Gonzalez (1832-1896) was a metalsmith and he taught his sons his craft.

1892 Along with his brother Joan (1868-1908), Julio attended evening drawing classes at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona. The two brothers exhibited their jewelry at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and were awarded a bronze medal. They later received a gold medal for the wrought metal pieces which they presented at the International Exposition of Applied Arts in Barcelona.

1896 Upon the death of Concordio Gonzalez on September 3, Joan took over the management of his father's workshop.

1897 In Barcelona, Joan and Julio frequented the cabaret, "Els Quatre Gats" named for the Parisian, "Chat Noir". Picasso exhibited a group of portraits in this meeting place for Barcelona's young intellectuals. After visiting the Prado Museum in Madrid, Julio decided, as had his brother, to dedicate himself to painting.

1899 Julio settled in Paris.

1900 After having sold the workshops in Barcelona, the Gonzalez family joined Julio in Paris. Julio was living at 22 Avenue du Main in Montparnasse. Picasso had come to Paris that same year.

1902 Julio and Joan traveled in Catalonia and to the Beleares Islands.

1903 He exhibited at the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts.

1904 Picasso painted Gonzalez's portrait, bearing witness to the growing friendship between them. Other mutual friends were the Spanish artists, Manolo and Pablo Gargallo, as well as the poet, Max Jacob and the critic Maurice Raynal.

1906 Julio met the young Edgar Varese, who was to be in the forefront of contemporary music. Julio's studio was in the Impasse Ronsin, where Brancusi would later locate his studio.

1907 Julio stayed at the home of Edgar Varese's grandfather, Monsieur Cortot. He made some rings at the blacksmith's forge in the village of Villars.

1908 Ill, Joan returned to Barcelona, where he died. The entire Gonzalez family left Paris and Julio returned to Paris, alone. Deeply affected by the death of his brother, Gonzalez stopped painting.

1909 Julio lived at 282 rue Saint Jacques. He exhibited six paintings at the Salon d'Automne and worked with Paco Durio on a project for a fountain.

1910 Julio lived at 126 rue de Vaugirard, where he made his first masks in repoussé metal. He also realized the fountain for Spain.

1911-

1912 Travelled to Barcelona

1913 Returned to Paris and lived at 31 Boulevard de Port-Royal. He exhibited a painting, *Femme à Sa Toilette*, as well as twenty pieces of jewelry, mainly rings.

1914 The family, having settled in Paris the year before, now returned to Barcelona. Julio stayed in his studio, 1 rue Leclerc, where he remained until 1920. He exhibited a group of paintings, a repoussé metal mask, and jewelry at the Salon des Indépendants.

1915 The Gonzalez family returned to Paris and opened a shop dealing in art objects at 136 Boulevard Raspail. (The cafe La Rotunde is at 134.)

1918 This was a decisive year in Julio's evolution. Hired as an apprentice welder from June 26 to September 26 in the workshops of the Soudure Autogene Francaise, Julio discovered acetylene welding, which he would later use in the construction of his iron works.

1920 A member of the Salon d'Automne, Gonzalez exhibited two masks, a sculpture, *Femme Assise* and three paintings. He presented two masks in repoussé bronze at the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts, and six pastels at the Salon des Indépendants.

1921 He sent bronzes to the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts; four paintings and four sculptures as well as the plaster, *Eve* to the Salon d'Automne; and three paintings and two works in repoussé bronze to the Salon des Indépendants. He now lived at 18 rue d'Odessa.

1922 His first one-man show opened on March 1st at the Galerie Povolovsky, 13 rue Bonaparte. He exhibited paintings, drawings, watercolors, sculptures, jewelry, various repoussé and hammered objects in silver, gold and iron; pottery and lacquered wood. The exhibition demonstrated his ability to work in such varied materials and techniques as well as the consistency of his inspiration. He exhibited a *Tête de Femme* in repoussé bronze and the bust of Roger de Nereys at the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts. At the Salon d'Automne, he showed as a painter and as a goldsmith.

1923 One-man show at the Galerie de Caméleon from January 1 to January 15. Participated in group exhibitions in Paris and Barcelona. Made the medal of Pasteur, destined for the Musée Pasteur, and exhibited, along with two paintings at the Salon d'Automne.

1924 His Paris studio was located at 11 rue de Medeh. He only showed paintings (still-lifes) at the Salon d'Automne and at the Salon des Tuileries.

1925 He exhibited in Madrid in a group show.

1926 The Salon des Indépendants organized a retrospective exhibition in celebration of its thirty years of activity (1884-1914). Gonzalez showed four paintings and two repoussé bronzes in this exhibition.

1927 Gonzalez made his first iron sculptures.

1928 Death of his mother on May 13. In the decorative arts section of the Salon d'Automne, Gonzalez showed four repoussé bronzes.

1929 Sculptures executed in iron exhibited at the Salon d'Automne.

1930 His rapid evolution was marked by a propensity towards abstraction. Exhibition at the Galerie de France, 2 rue de l'Abaye.

1931 Gonzalez collaborated with Picasso, who had sought his aid for the construction of the monument to Apollonaire. An exhibition, organized by the Galerie de France, of seven-teen works by Gonzalez, opened on May 30 at the Galerie du Centaure in Brussels. Included in this exhibition was the *Pierrot*, later known as *l'Arlequin*. The Hogar Catalan exhibited works by Catalan artists at the Galerie Billiet, 30 rue La Boetie in Paris. Among the artists represented with Gonzalez were Pablo Gargallo, Terres-Garcia, Apelles

THE CURRENT SCENE

# Gonzalez and Lipchitz

BY MARTICA SAWIN

It was 1930, give or take a year, when Picasso asked his friend and compatriot Julio Gonzalez, an experienced metalworker, to help him with some metal sculpture on which he was working. Gonzalez, who had learned to weld with the oxyacetylene torch while employed at a Renault factory during the war, had been working with shallow cut-out metal reliefs. Picasso had been experimenting with wire constructions. Thus both were already concerned with a new use of space in sculpture and were working directly in metal. From this collaboration, of which little has been recorded, Gonzalez gained the impetus to use the welding torch as a means to expand the concept of open-space sculpture, to design in space and, in his own words, "to utilize space and construct with it, as though one were dealing with a newly acquired material." The most drastic revolution in the history of sculpture was set in motion at this point.

Among those who had prepared the way for the new sculpture, possibly the most significant contribution was made by Jacques Lipchitz. Not only had he successfully found the means to break down traditional forms in his Cubist sculptures, which he maintains had little to do with Cubist painting, but in 1926 he made what may be considered the first open-space sculptures. It is true that Constructivism was already well under way, but this must be regarded as a different line of development. Lipchitz' "transparents," as he calls them, were small, cagelike works in ribboned metal—from which he moved into a freer, almost wholly linear style, at least in his small pieces such as *The Harpists*. However, in 1930, for reasons which will be discussed later, Lipchitz turned away from his radical pursuits toward the more grandiose and monumental forms which suited his expressive needs at that time, leaving expansion of his innovations to others.

To every artist who has endured the agonies of indecision and doubt and whose art has passed through fallow periods, the career of Gonzalez must serve as a heartening example. Although trained in metalwork from childhood in his family's foundry and accepting art as his vocation early in life, it was not until he was past the age of fifty that Gonzalez finally overcame the hesitations and conflicts which hampered his development, and found the means of concentrating his creative powers. And although the impact of his achievement is still being felt, it derives from a relatively small body of work, most of which was completed between 1930 and his death in 1942. All but

about twenty pieces of his existing sculptural output are included in the exhibition organized by the Galerie Chalette which was shown in New York during October and November, 1961,* and of the fifty-seven sculptures comprising the exhibition, roughly two-thirds are small pieces, less than thirteen inches in their largest dimension. While hardly an overpowering assemblage in terms of bulk, they kindle an awareness of discovery, of possibility, of vistas previously unimagined, which spans undiminished the thirty-year interval since their creation.

Of the pre-1930 sculptures, the exhibition includes the tenderly modeled *Little Maternity* of 1912-14 and a number of the masks and cut-out iron reliefs to which Gonzalez turned his hand during the 1920's—for the most part small, self-contained representational works, although an abstract element comes into play in some of the masks. The free-standing *Don Quixote* of 1929 points the way toward open-construction figures, but remains literal to the point of verging on caricature, while subsequent work approximates the figure non-literally, through metaphorical abstraction. Undoubtedly the example of Picasso's painting of this period must have aided Gonzalez in adjusting the figure to open-construction sculpture at this crucial juncture, but the tact and subtlety and the exacting continuity of invention are pure Gonzalez. Today, surrounded by his self-assured artistic progeny, one cannot help looking back with a certain wistfulness at the tremendous quality of his new creations, at the precision of sentiment which guides his progress into space, and the reserved, almost hesitant, non-polemical way he effected the most drastic revolution in the history of sculpture.

During the course of this exhibition a certain amount of criticism was heard over the casting of some iron sculptures in bronze. I would like to inject a clarifying note here to the effect that the casts, generally confined to two or three in number, were made in accordance with Gonzalez' wishes, as specified in documents in the pos-

*The exhibition has begun an extended tour for which the itinerary is as follows: San Francisco Museum of Art, February 4 to March 4; Cleveland Museum, July 10 to August 4; Montreal Museum of Art, August 20 to September 15; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, October 8 to October 28; Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, December 9 to January 6, 1963.

Right: Julio Gonzalez, Head: *The Tunnel* (1933); courtesy Galerie Chalette.

14

ARTS MAGAZINE/February 1962

## AUCTIONS

Giacometti, Sommertag (pastel, 1927); sold for $2,400.

### Moderns Figure in "Barometer" Sale at Parke-Bernet

A comprehensive sale of modern paintings, drawings and sculpture, offered at the Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, on January 11, provided a "barometer" reading of prevailing evaluations for twentieth-century artists.

August Macke's *Komposition* (1913), in water color, crayons and chalks, brought $3,000 from a New York dealer. A pastel by Giacometti, *Sommertag* (1927), was sold for $2,400 to a New York private collector. Lyonel Feininger's *Shipping* (1939), in pen and water color, went to a Long Island private collector for $2,300.

Among the paintings, a Dufy brought $1,600; a Vivin, $1,450; a Venard, $1,400; a Hartley, $1,300; a Marini, $1,100; an Edzard, $1,050; and a Buffet, $1,000.

## AUCTION CALENDAR

February 2 & 3, at 1:45 p.m. Parke-Bernet Galleries. English furniture and porcelains. Exhibition now.

February 6, at 1:45 p.m. Parke-Bernet Galleries. American autographs, manuscripts. Exhibition now.

February 9 & 10, at 1:45 p.m. Parke-Bernet Galleries. French furniture and decorations; Russian silver, enamels and paintings. Exhibition now.

February 15, at 1:45 p.m. Parke-Bernet Galleries. Old-master drawings, Gothic and Renaissance art and antiquities. Exhibition from February 10.

February 16 & 17, at 1:45 p.m. Parke-Bernet Galleries. English and other furniture, paintings, decorations. Exhibition from February 10.

February 21 & 22, at 1:45 p.m. Parke-Bernet Galleries. Important Chinese art, as well as Japanese, Indian, Tibetan and Nepalese. Exhibition from February 17.

February 23 & 24, at 1:45 p.m. Parke-Bernet Galleries. Furniture, decorations. Exhibition from February 17.

February 27, at 1:45 p.m. Parke-Bernet Galleries. Historical papers from the archives of Jean Frederic Phelippeaux. Exhibition from February 13.

GUSTAVE
SINGIER

PAINTINGS, WATERCOLORS, DRAWINGS

February

GALERIE CHALETTE

1100 MADISON AVENUE (82-83 ST.)

"Span of Life"

SCULPTURE BY

LIVINGSTON
WELCH

THROUGH FEBRUARY 17

WORLD HOUSE
GALLERIES

987 Madison Avenue, New York 21

13

THE CURRENT SCENE: Gonzalez and Lipchitz

Gonzalez, Large Venus (1937); courtesy Galerie Chalette.

session of his friend Hans Hartung. Some of the small bronzes were made during the sculptor's lifetime, and still others were made to preserve the plasters, such as the screaming *Head of the Montserrat II*, which he did after 1940, when he could no longer obtain welding material.

The development of open-construction sculpture as a result of modern technology can scarcely be considered anything less than inevitable. Gonzalez happened to have the technical knowledge and the impetus of his collaboration with Picasso which enabled him to implement it at an early date. Lipchitz, who said a few years ago, "I am responsible for all the transparent sculpture you see now so frequently," chose not to pursue the implications of his innovations. How close he came to the point of departure may be seen in his little ribboned-metal piece, *Mardi Gras*, of 1926 and in his *Chimenea* of 1930, both of which were shown in the large retrospective at the Gerson Gallery in November, 1961. Among the factors which restrained him, one cannot discount the purely technical, since the lost-wax process which he used for his "transparens" was hardly the most adaptable medium for large-scale open sculpture. Also on the evidence of his work, one concludes that he is by temperament a carver and a modeler and that the tactile element is of large importance. "How can you make sculpture wearing dark glasses!" he is reputed to have said of the welders.

It is possible, too, that a series of deaths, crowding close upon one another—those of his father, of his sister Jennie, who had spent her last days in his care, of his close friend Juan Gris, and the suicide of Pascin, whose mortuary mask he made—turned him away from theoretical and formal preoccupations and stirred in him the need for deeper expression.* Later he wrote, "And when we were young we were concerned mostly with syntax. I like all the others, was also concerned with syntax but I had to tell my stories and what came out of me then was my *Mother and Child* and *Return of the Prodigal Son* and so forth."

It was also in 1930 that Lipchitz, violently rejecting Cubism, suddenly came to appreciate Rodin, realizing that what he had mistaken for anarchy was a freedom of execution which reflected the "great richness of his tremendous personality." Whereas he had previously dealt with the "secular" subjects common to the Cubist repertoire—the nudes, guitarists, still lifes and harlequins—he now turned to themes reflecting his personal anguish and his sense of impending catastrophe as the tide of Fascism rose in Germany and Italy: themes of struggle such as *Jacob Wrestling with the Angel*; *Bull and Condor*, based on a brutal Peruvian rite; *David and Goliath*; *Prometheus and the Vulture*. From the strong, simple masses of 1930-31, the forms moved toward an agitated, convoluted

*See Encounters: The Life of Jacques Lipchitz, by Irene Patai. Funk and Wagnalls Co. $6.50.

16

ARTS MAGAZINE/February 1962

Jacques Lipchitz, *Only Inspiration* (1955-56); courtesy Otto Gerson Gallery.

baroque style. Fluid forms and surfaces heavily modeled to catch the shifting light characterize his turbulent work of the 1930's through the *Rape of Europa* (1938) and the autobiographical *Flight* (1940).

In his catalogue essay on Gonzalez* Hilton Kramer points out that the latter, too, turned away from open-form sculpture when dealing with a monumental and socially oriented subject in the *Montserrat*, arising from the impact of the Spanish Civil War, and he poses the question as to why the pioneer open-form sculptors were impelled to resort to closed-form methods when dealing with hebroic, socially significant subjects. A partial answer might be found in recalling the alternatives offered by the grand-prize winner and many of the entries for the "Unknown Political Prisoner" competition ten years ago. How unmoving in terms of the stated subject those open-form sculptures were, and how inadequately they dealt

*Julio Gonzalez, text by Hilton Kramer. Forty-three illustrations, six in color. Galerie Chalette. $5.00.

with a highly emotional human situation. I am not at all sure that a common answer explains both the Lipchitz and Gonzalez responses to this problem, but it is significant that as great innovators with strong traditional roots, they made the only enduring pieces of "propaganda" sculpture to come out of the European crisis or its aftermath. The more radical forms failed them as vehicles of communication when they treated the immediate, emotional response to crisis.

If there is protest in today's sculpture, it is a cultural rather than a social or political protest, and it is registered more naturally in the forms of cultural revolt which stress innovation in form and material. Despite its syntactical revolution, Gonzalez' sculpture remained essentially humanistic, attached to inherited values, while his artistic progeny devote themselves mainly to an art which is concrete, materialistic and non-connotative. Generalized aspects of the human plight do not engage the sympathies of contemporary artists. In sculpture many are concerned with registering individual existence by creating

17

Jacques Lipchitz, *Portrait of Curt Valentin* (1941); courtesy Otto Gerson Gallery.

Julio Gonzalez, *Pensive Head* (1929); courtesy Galerie Chalette.

new objects whose entire significance is contained in their concrete presence.

Lipchitz himself, less compelled in the last decade by the stirring themes on a monumental scale that occupied him during the years of upheaval, has turned his attention to new ways of dealing with his material. From 1955 to 1957 he worked on a series of "semiautomatics," plunging a mass of hot wax into water, working it with his fingers until it hardened and later clarifying its associative image with a hot tool. Out of this endeavor came such fluid and immediate works as *Only Inspiration*, which seems almost literally to crystallize in mid-air. Then, in 1958, he decided to carry the lost-wax process "à la limite du possible," casting actual objects, which struck his eyes and entered into metaphorical relationships, directly in metal. Out of this process came works of the sheerest fantasy, *Artichokes*, *Abundance*, *Enchanted Flute*, in which the juxtapositions of actual objects gave rise to fanciful configurations. It is curious that Lipchitz, who had been so antagonistic to Surrealism, should have

ultimately arrived at this freely associative incorporation of ready-mades. Some of the pieces actually are suggestive of Max Ernst's *frottages* caught in three dimensions.

Although Lipchitz regards himself as being in a world apart from most contemporary sculptors, it is interesting that he should arrive at a use of objects out of context, a use which is not totally different from that shown by a scrap-metal welder such as Richard Stankiewicz. The delicacy of manipulation and technical tour de force notwithstanding, these late works partake of the very contemporary spirit of assemblage. They represent Lipchitz' independent endeavors to extend his personal sculptural frontiers while clinging to his preferred medium. I think one will find in reviewing his career that it has been shaped by a struggle between the drive toward new forms and greater sculptural freedom and the necessity to give expressive urgency to these forms. It is a dilemma with which few have grappled so steadfastly as Lipchitz.

Right: Jacques Lipchitz, *Chimene* (1930); courtesy Otto Gerson Gallery.

18

ARTS MAGAZINE/February 1962

THE CURRENT SCENE

# The Torments of Imagination

BY JOHN SIMON

Despite certain minor aesthetic and biographical con-
tiguities, the three artists to whom the Museum of Modern
Art has been devoting its recent attention (in an exhibi-
tion* as rewarding in the answers it offers the eye as in
the questions it puts to the mind) have very little in com-
mon. This is not meant as censure: three different ap-
proaches to the fantastic are far more satisfying than three
versions of the same one. My only reproach is that the
exhibition could have had a pedagogic and philosophical
value supplementing its visual delights, had it been hung
differently. The clue, after all, is there in the first alcove,
where Redon, Moreau and Bresdin are represented by
one picture each.

When three artists depict, with great basic differences,
similar subjects from nature, mythology, literature, dream,
or the realm of decorative motifs, it behooves the exhibi-
tors to show these kindred and yet how diverse images side
by side, so that both trained and untrained eyes, both pas-
sionately concerned and pleasantly tickled minds, may be
challenged to more fruitful speculation than just following
chronologically an artist's development—which connois-
seurs hardly need, and laymen seldom bother with. Cer-
tain parts of the show could still proceed along chrono-
logical lines—indeed, more so than they actually do—by
fearless juxtaposition of graphics and oils. As things hang,
the average viewer's tendency is to gorge himself on the
colors of the first part of the show, and saunter heedless-
ly past the second as though it were something dated like,
say, movies before technicolor. Redon stands to lose a
good deal by this; Bresdin, everything.

One of the difficulties, presumably, lay in the fact that the
exhibition had three directors: John Rewald, director-in-
chief, and in charge of the Redon paintings; Dore Ashton,
responsible for Moreau; and Harold Joachim, entrusted
with Bresdin and the Redon graphics. But the main prob-
lem must have been the desire of Mr. Rewald and Miss
Ashton to demonstrate that these artists were forerunners
of various aspects of modernism. Mr. Rewald, more
cautiously, refers to elements that are "non-objective" or
"abstract"; whereas Miss Ashton, under the protective
covering of an "it is said," has Moreau painting very
"nearly like the *tachistes* or abstract expressionists."
More about this later; let us now look at the artists.

*Now closing in New York, the exhibition "Redon, Moreau and Bresdin" will be on view at the Art Institute of Chicago from March 2 to April 15.*

Rodolphe Bresdin (1825-85) is hardly a figure of major
importance. His drawings, lithographs and, above all,
etchings have a charm that is made up of archaism, ex-
treme delicacy of line, and intense but rather repetitious
imagination. What we see in his works is mostly bleak
rock structures, fleecy little clouds, distant cities, an oc-
casional solitary human being, a goodly number of beck-
oning or threatening skeletons, and, most of all, vegeta-
tion grown megalomaniac: trees and bushes displaying
unheard-of anfractuosities, opacities, writhings, inter-
twining—and where a little space is left, there, to be dis-
entangled by the eye, are little beasts: gamboling, gri-
macing, or gobbling up one another. Bresdin worshiped
Rembrandt and, apparently, revered Dürer, and their in-
fluence on him is unmistakable; one may also be reminded
of Altdorfer and other mystic masters, but here the simi-
larity is probably coincidental.

In his best-known works, like *The Good Samaritan* and *The Holy Family beside a Rushing Stream*, one is chiefly impressed by the enormous quantity of tiniest detail that Bresdin could marshal into a lithograph. The subject matter becomes secondary to a kind of frenzied dance of natural phenomena: polyp-like limbs of trees, burgeoning ferns and creepers, teeming leaves and clouds. Added to this muchness, and making it more so, are small animals among the proliferating roots, birds among the foliage and cirri, and, perceived through clearings, far-off cities, stunning in their almost microscopic detail. In the *Study for the Good Samaritan*, we can see such a filigree Oriental town separately, and are struck by the solidly architectural quality Bresdin could draw, as it were, on a pin's head.

But, moved perhaps by the bigheartedness of his sub-
ject, Bresdin made his *Samaritan* too large for so detailed,
almost fussy, an approach. In the case of *Fishing Boats
in Port*, another large lithograph, overelaboration results
in smudginess. Paradoxically, the smaller the dimensions
of a Bresdin etching or drawing, the more the fineness of
the line and exuberant crowding of detail can convey the
spaciousness of the scene and the fullness of the world;
such miniatures as *The Holy Family with a Pole and The
Knight* can move us with their microcosmic complete-
ness. And at his best, Bresdin approaches, indeed grazes,
greatness. Thus in the drawing *Nightmare*, where the
technique is freer, less compulsive; or in *Aqueduct and
Waterfalls*, where the aqueduct in the background is

20

ARTS MAGAZINE/February 1962

# Members Newsletter

## January-February 1969

### Julio Gonzalez

The age of iron began many centuries ago by producing very beautiful objects, unfortunately for a large part, arms. Today, it provides as well, bridges and railroads. It is time this metal ceased to be a murderer and the simple instrument of a super-mechanical science. Today the door is wide open for this material to be, at last, forged and hammered by the peaceful hands of an artist.—Julio Gonzalez

In 1937 The Museum of Modern Art purchased a wrought iron sculpture called *Head*, which had been made some two or three years before, and thus became the first museum in the United States—and perhaps the first public institution anywhere—to acquire sculpture by Julio Gonzalez. Although in the intervening years the name of Gonzalez has not become quite the household word as has that of his friend Picasso, he

Julio Gonzalez. *Woman with a Mirror*. 1936. Iron, 80½ x 17⅝ x 26⅝". Private collection

ranks—with Picasso—as one of the most important figures in the history of modern sculpture.

Gonzalez worked with iron, a material new for modern sculpture. With that material he created a method and—with Picasso—a style that has become one of the key sources of contemporary art. Although he is inextricably linked with Picasso, his life and artistic development were far different.

Gonzalez was born in Barcelona in 1876, into a close-knit family of craftsmen and artists. He was trained in metalwork in his father's atelier, where many of the best-known artists in Barcelona gathered. He did not participate in the Bohemian artistic life of Barcelona that nourished Picasso in the late nineties, and in fact did not meet Picasso until he went to Paris in 1900.

When Gonzalez arrived in Paris he was an accomplished painter, sculptor, and draftsman, but he concentrated on painting. Although he moved for a time in Picasso's circle and was acquainted with Cubism, his painting was rooted in the work of such late-nineteenth-century artists as Degas and Puvis de Chavannes. In fact, even when he began "to utilize ... space and to construct with it, as though one were dealing with a newly acquired material," he would adhere to the theme of woman-dancing, combing her hair, looking in the mirror.

After his brother's death in 1908, which left him in a melancholia that would last for some 18 years, he abandoned his work for a time, as well as his friends. He began to live a life of comparative solitude, and when he resumed work it was in an atmosphere removed from the avant-garde. It was not until the mid-1920's that he seemed able to come to terms with the fact that as a painter he was mediocre, and that his true gifts lay in the area of metalwork, and sculpture.

Julio Gonzalez. *Seated Woman Combing Her Hair Before a Mirror*. ca. 1910. Chalk, 12 x 11". Galerie de France, Paris

© The Museum of Modern Art, New York

In the late twenties and early thirties Picasso—
who had re-established their friendship after the war
—asked Gonzalez to help him make some *iron*
*constructions*. The collaboration gave Picasso the
technical means to carry out in space certain themes
he had been investigating on paper. For Gonzalez
—a man in his fifties—it provided a liberation that
marked the beginning of a new artistic life. During the
15 years that remained to him, he explored the
possibilities of shaping space with metal, and created
*a new concept of sculpture*.

Gonzalez' influence on contemporary sculpture has
been much noted and remarked upon. Less known
are his drawings. He was a passionate draftsman and
was rarely without pencil and paper. Although the
exhibition now on view contains examples of his best
work in sculpture, it concentrates on the drawings.
These divide themselves into the two parts that
characterize Gonzalez' career: landscapes, still lifes,
and portraits that derive from his career as a painter;
drawings and collages that accompany his years as
a sculptor—many of which are actually studies for
sculpture—in which color, pattern, and pasted papers
no longer describe an exterior world but are elements
that explore spatial relationships. Many have never
before been shown in this country.

Julio Gonzalez: *Drawings, Sculpture, Collages*. January 23-
March 16. Directed by William S. Lieberman and Josephine Withers

New York's Newest Museum

Last September, at 2033 Fifth Avenue and 125th Street, a new museum opened in New York City. Unlike the striking complexes that were on view in the recent *Architecture of Museums* exhibition, The Studio Museum in Harlem is not immediately noticeable in its surroundings. To find it one must locate the narrow door between neighborhood stores, go up one flight, and turn left. There, in what had been a sweatshop a few months before, lies an exhibition area half a block long, a set of four rooms for a Film Unit, and a Director's office. The birth of the newest museum on Fifth Avenue brings to mind the emergence of another New York museum, in 6 rooms on the 12th floor of an office building at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street. The beginnings of both museums—The Museum of Modern Art some 40 years ago and The Studio Museum in Harlem a few months ago—would seem to indicate that although architecture is important, a museum begins not with real estate but with an idea.

Humble origins apart, the two museums have some
other things in common. The idea of The Studio Mu-
seum began with various people and developed from
several directions. Some of the people involved had
become familiar with museums and their programs at
The Museum of Modern Art where they participated
in the activities of the Junior Council and the Inter-
national Council, or were members of the staff. Others
live in Harlem, and are active in the community as
residents, artists, business men, and workers. Through
months of meetings they worked together as an inter-

racial board formulating their aims and developing
their program.

Among the members of the Board of Trustees are
five young people who worked on the idea from the
beginning: Carter Burden, formerly an assistant to
Robert Kennedy, and a member of the Junior Council
of The Museum of Modern Art; Frank Donnelly, social
worker with the Windham Children's Service, and
also a member of the Junior Council; Eleanor Holmes
Norton, Assistant Legal Director of the American
Civil Liberties Union; Betty Blayton Taylor, formerly
Supervisor of Graphics and Plastics under the Arts
and Culture Division of Haryou-Act and now Execu-
tive Director of the Children's Art Carnival in Harlem;
and Campbell Wylly, Assistant Curator in the Depart-
ment of Painting and Sculpture of The Museum of
Modern Art, and responsible for the Museum's Art
Lending Service and Art Advisory Service for
Corporate Members. Others on the Board are
Hale Allen, J. Frederic Byers, III, Charles Cowles,
Donald Dean, Theodore Gunn, Inge Heckel, Lynn
Hofer, Kynaston McShine, Ann Phillips, Wendell Wray,
and Mr. and Mrs. Yann Weymouth.

The name the Board selected—The Studio
Museum in Harlem—reveals a number of basic facts
about the new museum and the intentions of its
founders. It will not form a permanent collection. As
the word “studio” implies, it is a museum in which
work takes precedence over storehouse. The program
envisioned by the founders provides the kind of flex-
ibility that will permit an immediate response to events
in the art world as they occur. This means that the
Museum will do many things that other institutions
would assiduously avoid. In fact, this is the story of the
Museum’s second show, which opened in November.

The show that was originally scheduled to follow
the first exhibition, which had featured the electronic
light constructions of Tom Lloyd, was to have been an
exhibition organized by Malikah Rahman surveying

Randy Abbott, director of the Film Unit, with a member of the course in which he teaches fundamental film techniques.

THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK

"HEAD, THE SNAIL"
C. 1935. Iron, 17¾ x 15¾ inches.

THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK, GIFT OF ROBERT CONZALEZ RICHARD

"HEAD, THE SNAIL"—STUDY
1935. Pencil and ink on paper, 12¾ x 9¾ inches.

fixes and household accessories — that provided González with his principal livelihood during much of his lifetime. The inclusion of such work is of more than biographical interest, of course. It was as a decorative metalsmith that González was trained as a youth, and he continued to practice this craft in his maturity. It was his mastery of metal-craft, in fact, that led to his sculptural achievements. These decorative objects thus fill a significant gap in our knowledge of his development.

Altogether there are some 250 items in the Guggenheim exhibition. Many are very small in size, of course. Yet the show promises to give us for the first time a detailed account of the range of González's interests, the versatility of his gifts and the originality he brought to his greatest work.

The career that is traced in this uneven and many-sided oeuvre was an unusual one. Nothing in González's life — except, perhaps, the poverty he endured as a mature artist — conforms to our received ideas about the avant-garde artist in the 20th century. There is no dramatic break with family or church, no programmatic rupture with the past, no revolutionary manifestoes or bohemian adventures or personal derangement. For much of González's life, there is not even a suggestion that he harbored any thought of special ambition for his art. He was a serious artist, to be sure, but not a particularly distinguished one. He was in his 50's before he produced his first significant work, and it was only in the last dozen years of his life that he created the masterpieces that make him an important figure in the art of his time. William Tucker observed that "González was a radical through circumstance rather than deliberate intent," and this in itself places him at a considerable distance from common notions of the avant-garde sensibility. ☐

González was born in Barcelona, the youngest of four children, in 1876. His father, Concordio, was a recognized master in the field of decorative metal-craft. He was also a part-time sculptor who was well known in Barcelona art circles. González's mother, who was Catalan, also came from a family with artistic interests. All of the González children — Julio's brother, Juan, and his sisters, Dolores and Pilar, as well as Julio himself — were trained from an early age to work in the family metalcraft business, which enjoyed a certain prosperity in González's youth.

Both Julio and his brother took up painting and

drawing while working as metalsmiths, joining a Roman Catholic art group called the Círculo Artístico San Lluc, whose most famous member was then the architect Antonio Gaudí. (Julio's maternal uncle, a painter and illustrator, was the president of this organization.) According to Prof. Josephine Withers, whose monograph "Julio González: Sculpture in Iron," published in 1978, gives us the best account we have of the artist's early years, "it was not ... the staid and conservative atmosphere of the Círculo which attracted González, but rather a younger group of artists and writers whom he met there, and who went on to form their own group. This Cénacle frequently gathered in the González home, either for discussions or for drawing sessions with a model." While this younger group exhibited its work in the salons and contributed to avant-garde journals, Julio appears to have remained something of a spectator. It was his brother, Juan, who was more active as an independent artist.

"Through the few accounts which remain to us," writes Professor Withers of the young González, "the picture emerges of a shy and sensitive man, eager to become an artist, but uncertain of how to go about it. Already as a young man in his early 20's, González appears to have been plagued with a certain hesitancy and skepticism which was to remain with him for many years." All the same, though his own early activities were clearly overshadowed by his brother's, González persisted in his artistic interests, and from the 1890's onward, managed to exhibit both his paintings and his metalwork with some regularity. Examples of his metalwork, for example, were shown not only in Barcelona but at the World's Colombian Exposition in Chicago as early as 1883, while González was still in his teens. This suggests, if nothing else, a high degree of technical proficiency obtained at an early age.

The first of the crises that shattered the tranquil, close-knit family and artistic life of the González household came in 1898 with the death of Concordio. Juan González, who was 30 at the time, thereupon moved both the family and the family business to Paris. It was in Paris that the González brothers first met Picasso. (Picasso made two portrait drawings of Julio González in 1902, and both are included in the Guggenheim exhibition.) Paris and its environs were to remain Julio González's home for the rest of his life. It was in the Paris suburb of Arcueil that González died in 1942. Picasso was one of the few friends from this early period to attend the funeral.

The influence of Cubism did not make itself deeply felt in his work until the 1930's. González was an esthetic conservative, not a member of the avant-garde.

"CUBIST HEAD"
1937. Pencil, India ink and collage on cream paper, 9¾ x 6¾ inches.

MUSEO DE ART MODERNO, BARCELONA

46

LEFT Dealers Kirk deGooyer of Los Angeles, Stephen Wirtz and Paule Anglim of San Francisco and Linda Durham of Santa Fe predicted the effects on the contemporary art market of recent trends in painting. RIGHT What critics and collectors really look for in new and unfamiliar art was one of the questions addressed to dealers Daniel Stearns of the Roy Boyd Gallery in Los Angeles and New Yorkers Max Hutchinson and Marisa Del Re in a panel on "How to View and Enjoy Art."

royalty to the artist when his work is resold in California for $1,000 or more and the resale price is higher than the original price, has done "serious damage" to the art market in California. The law hasn't helped the majority of California artists, Merryman asserted, and has only "made a few already wealthy artists wealthier." Albert E. Elsen, Walter A. Haas Professor of Art History at Stanford, agreed and suggested that proceeds from the Resale Royalties Act be put into a medical fund for indigent artists to be administered by artists and physicians. The resale law was authored by State Senator Alan Sieroty of Santa Monica, an arts-law activist, who didn't comment on it. Instead, he told the conference audience that legislators must begin recognizing the need for arts education, particularly in secondary schools. He pointed to the increasing emphasis on science and on technological "computer learning" and asked, "What happens to the arts?"

Elsen was also a participant in a panel on the sculpture market and expressed concern over the rise in recasting due to the demand for bronzes, particularly the increasingly common practice of "surmoulage"—the casting of bronzes from finished sculptures rather than from plaster or wax maquettes. Surmoulages are inferior in quality to the original sculptures. Elsen added that under U.S. property-rights laws, this process is not illegal if the work involved is in the public domain (that is, if it is not copyrighted or if the copyright has expired). One result, said Elsen, is that fountains are organizing to register everything they cast, and efforts are being made to pass art-multiples laws, such as the California and New York acts that require dealers to disclose certain facts about such works.

In a panel on thefts, fakes and forgeries, William E. Martin, an art-theft specialist with the Los Angeles Police

Department, told the conference that "art is still being stolen on a large scale, even with the recent softness in the market." Art theft has become tied to the narcotics trade, Martin says, and "wealthy dope dealers have created a market for stolen art." In one case drug dealers even set up an elaborate showroom for their stolen wares. Bonnie Burnham, executive director of the International Foundation for Art Research, advised collectors to keep detailed records of their works of art, including photographs of each piece. "Without photographic documentation," she said, "your possibilities of recovery are slim."

On a panel devoted to risks and opportunities in the photography market, experts saw increasing market potential for color photographs. "The risk of collecting color has been reduced in recent years because technology has improved longevity," said San Francisco dealer Tom Meyer. He added that large-format color prints are moving toward a more "painterly" statement and more emotional content. He named Arthur Ullman and Richard Misrach as among the leading exponents of color photography. Harry Lunn, the Washington, D.C., dealer, urged collectors to look beyond the familiar images. "Mine the depths of a photographer," he advised. "There's more to Diane Arbus than the image of the boy and the hand grenade."

On investing in art, C. Hugh Hildesley, senior vice-president of Sotheby's in New York and chairman of Sotheby's Appraisal Company, recommended this strategy: Select a field of interest, educate yourself before making your first purchase, seek expert advice (from dealers, auction houses and museum curators) and search out the best objects you can afford. "Don't bargain hunt," he said. "The return on an investment is a long-term capital growth. There are no dividends except psychic pleasure."■

LEFT Moderator Richard W. Walker, managing editor of *The ARTnewsletter*, introduced tax-strategy workshop leaders Gilbert S. Edelson, secretary-treasurer of the Art Dealers Association of America, and New York attorney Eugene L. Vogel. RIGHT Benjamin E. Weschler, president of Weschler & Son, and Donald D. Webster, president and co-owner of C. G. Sloan & Co., both of Washington, D. C., were among panelists who provided expert advice on buying and selling at auction.

SUMMER 1983/103

STEDELIJK MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM

The Montserrat, 1936-37, iron, 64½ inches high. The work was created in support of the Spanish Republican cause.

Women emerge as an important theme in the exhibition's small group of paintings dating from around 1906 to 1918 and slightly larger group of drawings. Their very titles—*Large Nude, Head of a Woman with Red Shawl, Woman Fixing a Young Girl's Hair, Young Woman Combing Her Hair, Mother and Child*—reflect González's interest in investigating the gamut of Post-Impressionist treatments of women, from the idealist and romantic-symbolic to the natural-intimist. Although they bring to mind works by Puvis de Chavannes, the young Picasso, Bonnard and Vuillard, among others, these paintings and drawings more than hold their own. With an emphasis on rhythmical shapes and silhouettes, the graphically bold compositions render the essence of gesture, character and mood. Similar aims are evident in the series of small terra-cottas dating from around 1914 and can be found as well in González's abstract sculptures of the late 1920s and after. *Sulky Face* (1936), a work in pen, ink and watercolor executed in the planar idiom he developed in the 1930s, has its source in a probing realist pastel of the same theme, *Sulky Profile* (circa 1907-09), done nearly 30 years earlier.

The turning point in González's career—when he began applying his expertise in metalwork to the production of sculpture—occurred in the late 1920s, by which time the artist was already in his 50s. It was prompted by his close contact with Pablo Gargallo and Picasso, two friends from the ranks of the Spanish artistic community in Paris. González is said to have introduced oxyacetylene welding to

Small Sickle (Figure of a Woman), ca. 1937, forged bronze, 11¾ inches high, explores the evocative potential of forms.

ADELE AND IRVING MOSCOVITZ COLLECTION, NEW YORK

106/ARTNEWS

Gargallo (1881-1933), a Catalan sculptor who worked in different metals, including iron, lead and bronze. Gargallo was best known for his stylized heads and figures in which anatomical details were refined and reduced. The resulting sculptures were activated by the dynamic interplay of solid planes and cutout shapes. Traces of Gargallo's form of sculpture can be sensed in González's earliest metalwork of this period, particularly in his cutout portraits, such as *Head with Hat* (circa 1928-29), in which the stylized treatment of lips and nose is quite different from the artist's matter-of-fact, realistic drawings of similar subjects (women in hats) just a few years earlier. The flapperlike curls in the tiny *Small Baroque Mask* (circa 1927-28) are also something one might expect to find in work by Gargallo. Interestingly, both this sculpture and *Japanese Mask (Portrait of Foujita)* (circa 1928) are made of metal plates with raised ridges, a form that also showed up in Giacometti's bronze *The Couple* (1926). Whether or not González already knew the Giacometti work, his own creation signals his growing ambition to experiment at a mature age.

It can't be emphasized enough, though, that despite his relatively late blossoming, González was no naive newcomer to the Paris art world. He had lived in Paris since 1900, had exhibited at the various Salons before World War I and personally knew many of the city's leading figures, including Brancusi, the painter and poet Max Jacob, and the writers Maurice Raynal and André Salmon, in addition to Picasso and Gargallo. He had seen movements come and

*Harlequin. Pierrot*, 1930-31, iron, 17 inches high, is a deliberate homage to Picasso, who frequently treated this theme.

*Woman Combing Her Hair*, ca. 1931, iron, 67 inches high, challenges the viewer to find both formal and representational meanings.

KUNSTHAUS ZURICH

CENTRE GEORGES POMPIDOU, PARIS

SUMMER 1983/107

MUSEO DE ARTE MODERNO, BARCELONA

CARMEN MARTINEZ AND VIVIANE GRIMMINGER COLLECTION, PARIS

González's training as a jeweler helped in his mastery of metal sculpture. From left to right: necklace of silver-plated metal with green carnelians, 1916-25; gold pendant with crystal bead and gilded copper pendant with rose crystal bead and pearl, both ca. 1900-10.

go, including Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism, Purism, Neoclassicism, Surrealism and the international Constructivism of the 1920s.

Between 1928 and 1931, González served as Picasso's technician, helping him create the striking iron-wire and metal sculptures *Wire Construction*, *Woman in the Garden*, *Figure of a Woman*, *Head* and *Head of a Woman*. It was with Picasso's encouragement that González turned his expertise as a metalsmith to serious sculpture of his own, expanding his repertoire from the metal cutouts to the larger, more ambitious openwork pieces that reveal his grasp of Cubism, Constructivism and Surrealism.

Certain of González's motifs, including the spiky triad

that he frequently used to indicate hair, can be traced back to Picasso's Surrealist paintings of the '20s, such as the *Woman in an Armchair* of 1927, and to the related metal sculptures that González had helped execute. What matters more, though, is González's ability to transform and personalize such motifs. The viewer focuses less on possible sources than on the powerful presence of the sculptures themselves. Even González's most deliberate homage to Picasso, *Harlequin. Pierrot* (1930-31), based on a theme frequently treated by the painter, speaks tellingly about González's special sensitivity to the expressive potential of surface and form. The polish and precision of *Harlequin. Pierrot*, its striking combination of straight and curved elements that motivate the viewer to follow its rhythmical articulation of space, and its solid appearance are among the qualities that recur throughout González's sculptures of the 1930s. Further examples are *Seated Woman I* (circa 1935), with its curvilinear, silhouetted form that brings to mind Lipchitz's figures from 1915, and the *Reclining Head Called "Spanish Mask"* (1930), almost surely a comment on Brancusi's reclining heads.

Early on, González studied painting and drawing. Here, *Catalan Peasant Woman*, ca. 1914-18, pastel on paper, 12¾ by 10 inches.

Small Bowed *Seated Woman*, ca. 1914, terra-cotta, 6½ inches high. In early work, González sought to render character and mood.

108/ARTNEWS

CATHEDRAL MARTINEZ

MODERNA MUSEET, STOCKHOLM

LEFT Monsieur Cactus (Cactus Man I), 1939, iron, 26¼ inches high. RIGHT Woman Combing Her Hair, ca. 1934, iron, 47¾ inches high. The artist's ambitious mature openwork pieces reveal his grasp of Cubism, Constructivism and Surrealism.

The subjects of his sculptures were important to González. They ranged from simple formal examinations of shapes, represented in the show by such works as *Taut Form* and *Slender Form* (both circa 1937), to complex metaphorical investigations of the evocative potential of forms. Examples of the latter are *Small Sickle* (*Figure of a Woman*) and *Gothic Man* (both circa 1937), the second a work that at once suggests Gothic architecture and the human figure. González's own sly appreciation of the provocative and ambiguous side of his more advanced sculpture is indicated in the multiple-choice title given to another large piece, *The Angel. The Insect. Dancer* (circa 1935). However, González was not afraid to take up the theme—almost a cliché by that time—of a woman combing her hair and bring it up to date in his abstract sculpture. The lifesize, 67-inch-high *Woman Combing Her Hair* of 1931 brilliantly demonstrates his ability to surprise and mystify. Without knowing the title beforehand, even the most discerning viewer would find it difficult to decode the work on first sight. What the first look does encourage is a direct response to the sheen and substantiality of the iron surfaces—the viewer can sense the compactness and weight of the material—and a heightened awareness of the confident, animated qualities of this fantastic configuration, which looks so magically right. Once the subject is known, the real fun begins. The viewer is challenged to inspect the artist's process and concepts, to reread the separate elements in terms both of their formal and of their figural or repre-

sentational meanings. The Guggenheim installation, with its juxtapositions of sculptures and related drawings, provided ample opportunity to follow the evolution of various works from idea to finished product.

Not an artist to be limited by style or technique, González also created sculpture in a realist vein. Peasant women were given symbolic interpretations in the lifesize iron *Montserrat* of 1936-37 and the 12-inch-high cast-bronze *Small Frightened Montserrat* of 1941-42. Exhibited at the invitation of the Spanish Republican government in the Spanish pavilion at the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques in Paris, the large *Montserrat*, a figure of a standing peasant woman holding a baby and a sickle, seems to embody the indestructible will and strength of the Spanish people, then embroiled in the civil war. Modeled in the style of Rodin's small figures, *Small Frightened Montserrat*, a figure of a screaming woman made during World War II—and just before González's death—captures the horror of the period.

A review of González's career brings to light his daring and, in most instances, successful mastery of all the modern sculptural idioms he attempted. Besides revealing the abstract potential of iron to later generations of sculptors, his work provides evidence of a hand capable of liberating the imagination. The Guggenheim exhibition has shown that an objective assessment of González's place in 20th-century art is long overdue. The time has arrived to look at him with fresh eyes. ■

SUMMER 1983/109

# A Berenice Abbott Photograph
Can Grace Your Home.

Others are in
the Museum
of Modern Art

"Berenice Abbott's inexhaustible subject is the familiar world, and her achievement is that she reveals its fascination without modifying its documentary truth."

John Canaday
Art Critic

Pennsylvania Station, New York

Every once in a great while an art lover finds a rare opportunity. We believe that this is one of those rare times.

A photographic collection
to prize for years to come.

The works of Berenice Abbott, one of America's greatest living photographers, are now being published in one magnificent volume. Many of the photographs come from the artist's personal file; many have never before been published, and some have never been seen by the public.

One-time limited edition
PLUS the photograph of your choice.

To celebrate the publication of this important work, Artnews Books and Berenice Abbott have decided to issue four of her most magnificent photographs (one hundred of each!) to lovers of fine photography. Abbott herself has hand signed each one.

Berenice Abbott's works have won wide acclaim for over five decades and have been shown in many one-woman exhibits, beginning in Paris in 1926 and continuing through today in 1983 at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the Witkin Gallery in New York City, and hundreds more. Berenice Abbott's photographs have long been in the permanent collections of

the Museum of Modern Art, the Chicago Art Institute, the International Center of Photography and in all the world's great museums and private collections. As collectors have discovered the genius in Berenice Abbott's photographs, the prices of her works have soared.

You will have your choice
of four great photographs.

When planning to offer this limited edition volume to you (only 400 copies), the publisher decided to include the signed photograph as part of the offer. But Berenice Abbott did not want only one photograph; she preferred instead to choose four different images representing her personal selection of her finest work at different stages of her long career. She has made and signed only one hundred copies of each print, plus five artist's proofs which are not for sale, for official publication in 1983, Abbott's 85th year.

The prints that she has selected are:

**James Joyce**, 1928. This photograph is the one we all think of when we envision Joyce. When taking this picture, Abbott had to use only the natural light from the skylight, as Joyce had severe trouble with his eyes. In fact, he still had to wear a hat to shade his eyes.

**Pennsylvania Station, New York,**
1936. Of this magnificent structure Abbott says, "It was absolutely wicked to tear the building down; it was cheating America, denying Americans their cultural heritage." The building remains vivid in Abbott's great photograph.

**Designer's Window, Bleecker Street,**
**New York,** 1947. The grace of the reindeer suspended in air contrasts with the reflection of the sign in the window, and makes this work continuously fascinating.

**House, Belfast, Maine,** 1954. While photographing the great coastal highway, U.S. 1, Abbott recorded this Victorian gingerbread house and its stately elm, evoking a rural America that is rapidly disappearing.

For decades one of Abbott's best-loved images, "James Joyce" was previously published in a limited edition, but now Abbott has agreed to reprint it one last time. The other three prints have never before been published, and Abbott will not reissue them. No matter which photograph you select, it will represent an important addition to your home. Each photograph is 11 inches by 14 inches, is made from the original negative and is printed to the edge of the Ilford Galerie paper for maximum image size. The photographs are mounted on heavy 16-inch by 20-inch board, a standard size that is easy to frame. Your acquisition of one of these prints will become the focus of your collection, a work of art to be enjoyed by all who see it.

ALONG with the print is the book,
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