An important name in modern art from the first half of the 20th century, considered by many to be the father of modern iron sculpture, the Catalan artist Julio González (1876-1942) will be shown at the Instituto Tomie Ohtake starting this Tuesday, the 4th of June. Entitled Julio González – Space and Matter, the exhibition brings to Brazil 70 works, including sculptures, drawings, paintings, photographs and documents, dating from different periods of the artist's career.
Gonzáles' trajectory begins in his father's artistic locksmith shop, at the end of the 19th century, in Barcelona. The artist moved to Paris in 1899 and devoted himself mainly to painting. During this period, he approached important names of modernism, notably Pablo Picasso.
It was in a later period, after the 1920s, that González began to dedicate himself more intensively to sculpture – after working as an apprentice welder at Soudure Autogène Française. From then on, the artist collaborated with Picasso and Brancusi and, in 1934, joined the group Circle and Square. In 1934, along with many other modern artists, he signed the group's manifesto Abstraction – Creation.
In the words of the exhibition's curator, Elena Llorens: “His sculptural production in iron must be inserted in the disruptive context of the avant-gardes of the first half of the century, characterized by intense formal speculation. We owe it to González for having endowed sculpture with a new grammar capable of displacing, with a material totally alien to tradition, the age-old notions of volume and mass”.
The exhibition is a partnership of Instituto Tomie Ohtake, Fundação Abertis and Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (Barcelona), to which the artist's daughter donated around 200 works in 1974 – making the institution one of the main promoters of the work. from Gonzalez.
Julio Gonzáles – Space and Matter
Instituto Tomie Ohtake – Av. Faria Lima, 201, Sao Paulo
Until August 4, 2019
Free admission
