Femme assise I (Seated Woman I)

Living alongside the creative process of Pablo Picasso’s metal sculpture period from 1928 to 1932, Julio González found the perfect impetus for his own production. Femme assise I (Seated Woman I) is one of González’s largest sculptures in iron, existing in a perceptual post-cubist, analytical, systematic space, based materially on metalcraft and inspired formally by a desire to delve into the perception of the figure and the space around it. The new sculptural language that González had been forging since the early years of the 20th century became fully formed with this work, which exemplifies the definition of the new modern spatial dialectics. The figure is constructed using symbols of elements of the female body in welded sheet metal, suggesting a reclining figure, like the canonical representation of the model in the artist’s studio. The synthesis of regular volumes and linear signs, with which the artist expresses the feeling of gravity and roundness of the female form in such a position, transforms the piece into a timeless, non-anecdotal scene, relating to Julio González’s utopia: the conversion of sculpture into “drawing-in-space” so as to shake off its historical burden.



Carmen Fernández Aparicio