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Lot Essay
This work is sold with a photo-certificate from Carmen Martinez and Viviane Grimminger dated 5 March 1988.
Untitled is a rare oil study for a late work which González was preparing shortly before his death in 1942. One of González's last ambitions was to create a large constructed iron sculpture based on his figure of the Small Frightened Montserrat. Towards this end he made a number of iron and plaster studies of the Montserrat's hands raised in anger, terror and defiance against the dark destructive powers above her. Out of these preparations a number of new works began to emerge. In these new drawings, the abstracted figure of a woman raising a giant hand towards the heavens, sometimes in defiance, sometimes imploringly, reappears constantly, as González seems to test out the sculptural possibilities for the figure through his drawing.
The outbreak of the Second World War had proved cruel for González and it is widely believed to have been a strong contributing factor to his fatal heart attack in March 1942. In the aftermath of the catastrophe of the Spanish Civil War and under the oppression of the Nazi Occupation, with his family separated and his son-in-law Hans Hartung forced to live in hiding, the theme of the desperate and angry Montserrat was clearly one close to González's heart. Fleeing Paris for the south of France in May 1940, González was unable, due to the material shortages of the time, to make any iron sculpture. He returned to his home in Arcueil in 1941 and there he subsequently began to explore new and often fanciful sculptural possibilities in numerous drawings. Untitled is an extremely rare work in oil from this period that depicts a simplified version of the female figure that dominates González's sculptural ideas at this time. Constructed from simple geometric forms, and displaying the huge hand common to his ideas for a reworking of the Montserrat theme, this figure also seems reminiscent of Picasso's surreal beach figures of 1929-30, when, in collaboration with González, the two artists had initiated the modern tradition of constructed iron sculpture. Unlike Picasso's female beach creatures, the female in this work however, is no monstrous all-devouring wife or lusty beach-ball-babe, but, as in several other drawings, a free standing monument proudly wearing the cap of a Catalan peasant.
Untitled is a rare oil study for a late work which González was preparing shortly before his death in 1942. One of González's last ambitions was to create a large constructed iron sculpture based on his figure of the Small Frightened Montserrat. Towards this end he made a number of iron and plaster studies of the Montserrat's hands raised in anger, terror and defiance against the dark destructive powers above her. Out of these preparations a number of new works began to emerge. In these new drawings, the abstracted figure of a woman raising a giant hand towards the heavens, sometimes in defiance, sometimes imploringly, reappears constantly, as González seems to test out the sculptural possibilities for the figure through his drawing.
The outbreak of the Second World War had proved cruel for González and it is widely believed to have been a strong contributing factor to his fatal heart attack in March 1942. In the aftermath of the catastrophe of the Spanish Civil War and under the oppression of the Nazi Occupation, with his family separated and his son-in-law Hans Hartung forced to live in hiding, the theme of the desperate and angry Montserrat was clearly one close to González's heart. Fleeing Paris for the south of France in May 1940, González was unable, due to the material shortages of the time, to make any iron sculpture. He returned to his home in Arcueil in 1941 and there he subsequently began to explore new and often fanciful sculptural possibilities in numerous drawings. Untitled is an extremely rare work in oil from this period that depicts a simplified version of the female figure that dominates González's sculptural ideas at this time. Constructed from simple geometric forms, and displaying the huge hand common to his ideas for a reworking of the Montserrat theme, this figure also seems reminiscent of Picasso's surreal beach figures of 1929-30, when, in collaboration with González, the two artists had initiated the modern tradition of constructed iron sculpture. Unlike Picasso's female beach creatures, the female in this work however, is no monstrous all-devouring wife or lusty beach-ball-babe, but, as in several other drawings, a free standing monument proudly wearing the cap of a Catalan peasant.