JULIO GONZÁLEZ, PABLO PICASSO AND THE DEMATERIALISATION OF SCULPTURE

 
SEPTEMBER 23, 2022 - JANUARY 8, 2023
 
FUNDACIÓN MAPFRE | MADRID, SPAIN
 
Julio González, Cactus Man I, 1939
Cast bronze and iron nails, 65 × 27,4 × 15,5 cm
González Administration
 

Julio González (1876 – 1942) and Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973) met in Barcelona in the late 1890s. At the turn of the 20th century, they both moved to Paris where they actively participated in a period of profound revolution in art. This exhibition offers a reassessment of the two artists’ creative convergences and exchanges over the course of their careers, and most notably, their collaboration between the years 1928 and 1932, a period when Picasso needed the technical assistance of González to undertake a project for a funerary monument to Guillaume Apollinaire.

Historically, this joint endeavor is considered to be the moment that saw the “invention” of iron sculpture, coinciding with the introduction of abstraction into that field. For the first time, the exhibition shows how this collaboration, which marks one of the key moments in 20th century art, was not an isolated event. Instead, it was the consequence of a process that “reflected a desire for transparency and dematerialization which stimulated artistic creation in different ways in the late 1920s and early 1930s” – Tomás Llorens