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Lot Essay
Julio González is justly acclaimed as the father of modern metal sculpture. Picasso, the American sculptor David Smith, the painter John Graham and a handful of others grasped the significance of his work as far back as the early 1930s, not long after González developed his pioneering use of welding techniques and scrap iron to create the sculptures that marked the final and consummate phase of his art.
González had been trained as a decorative metalsmith; he seemed like an artisan lifted from the traditions and sensibility of Europe's medieval past and set down in the 20th century. He was a devoutly religious man who loved Gaudi's Sagradia Familia cathedral in Barcelona, the city where he was born and grew up, and the great Gothic cathedrals in and around Paris, his adopted city. González wrote: "Every religion has its temple, but the only one through which the mystery of its architectural lines, purifies our thoughts and raises them above the world, is Gothic (ogival) art" (quoted in J. Withers, op. cit., p. 138). L'homme gothique is perhaps more a self-portrait of its author than other works from his hand, insofar as it describes and embodies the traditions from which he emerged and the highest ideals to which he was drawn.
The dominant form in L'homme gothique is the ogival (pointed or lancet) arch, the basic structural component in Gothic architecture, which enabled the medieval architect to create its soaring, light-filled open spaces. The division of the figure at the waist into upper and lower sections is similar to the vertical construction of the main arcade within a cathedral. Other aspects of the figure correspond to elements in the Gothic cathedral: the legs as piers, the waist as the triforium at mid-height on the arcade, the upper torso as the clerestory. The narrower side of the arch in the figure is analogous to a flying buttress, the external brace that pushes in on the cathedral to support the height of the building, whose its pinnacle surmounted by a finial, which is akin to the curved tuft of hair at the top of the figure's head.
In L'homme gothique González has deftly employed these structural elements in a material sense, and translated the forms into welded metal, from which the present bronze cast was made. This sculpture is more significantly, however, a spiritual representation of man, derived from the beauty and proportion of its forms. González wrote: "When an architect of the cathedral conceives one of his magnificent spires, it is not of geometry that he thinks; at this moment, it is only a question of giving it a beautiful form which while responding to the architectural requirements, can at the same time idealize that which his imagination and heart inspire in him" (quoted in J. Withers, op. cit., p. 134). González stated his aims to David Smith, who later included them in a commemorative article, "To project and draw in space with new methods. Only the pinnacle of a cathedral can show us where the soul can rest suspended. These points in infinity were the precursors to the new art." (quoted in "The First Master of the Torch", Art News, vol. 54, no. 10, February 1956, p. 35).
González had been trained as a decorative metalsmith; he seemed like an artisan lifted from the traditions and sensibility of Europe's medieval past and set down in the 20th century. He was a devoutly religious man who loved Gaudi's Sagradia Familia cathedral in Barcelona, the city where he was born and grew up, and the great Gothic cathedrals in and around Paris, his adopted city. González wrote: "Every religion has its temple, but the only one through which the mystery of its architectural lines, purifies our thoughts and raises them above the world, is Gothic (ogival) art" (quoted in J. Withers, op. cit., p. 138). L'homme gothique is perhaps more a self-portrait of its author than other works from his hand, insofar as it describes and embodies the traditions from which he emerged and the highest ideals to which he was drawn.
The dominant form in L'homme gothique is the ogival (pointed or lancet) arch, the basic structural component in Gothic architecture, which enabled the medieval architect to create its soaring, light-filled open spaces. The division of the figure at the waist into upper and lower sections is similar to the vertical construction of the main arcade within a cathedral. Other aspects of the figure correspond to elements in the Gothic cathedral: the legs as piers, the waist as the triforium at mid-height on the arcade, the upper torso as the clerestory. The narrower side of the arch in the figure is analogous to a flying buttress, the external brace that pushes in on the cathedral to support the height of the building, whose its pinnacle surmounted by a finial, which is akin to the curved tuft of hair at the top of the figure's head.
In L'homme gothique González has deftly employed these structural elements in a material sense, and translated the forms into welded metal, from which the present bronze cast was made. This sculpture is more significantly, however, a spiritual representation of man, derived from the beauty and proportion of its forms. González wrote: "When an architect of the cathedral conceives one of his magnificent spires, it is not of geometry that he thinks; at this moment, it is only a question of giving it a beautiful form which while responding to the architectural requirements, can at the same time idealize that which his imagination and heart inspire in him" (quoted in J. Withers, op. cit., p. 134). González stated his aims to David Smith, who later included them in a commemorative article, "To project and draw in space with new methods. Only the pinnacle of a cathedral can show us where the soul can rest suspended. These points in infinity were the precursors to the new art." (quoted in "The First Master of the Torch", Art News, vol. 54, no. 10, February 1956, p. 35).