Julio González

González was an influential sculptor of the 1920s and 30s. Born in Barcelona to a family of metalsmiths, he spent much of his life in France but remained closely connected to his Catalan roots. A friend and collaborator of Picasso, González pioneered the use of welded iron in sculpture. He was also a skilled and prolific draftsman. In his later years, he made drawings and sculptures of the figure of Montserrat, a female personification of a mountain in Barcelona that is a symbol of Catalonian identity. It was a subject he first adopted in 1936 in response to the Spanish Civil War. One of his life-size iron figure of The Montserrat (1936-37) was exhibited at the Spanish Pavilion of the 1937 Paris Exposition, alongside Picasso's Guernica. The two drawings that appear on the front and back of this sheet relate to this subject, to which González returned at the beginning of World War II. On one side is a monstrous head, its mouth opened wide in a cry of agony. It relates closely to the image of a crying child that González made the same year. The skull is treated in a planar style that recalls Cubism. On the verso, the artist drew a more naturalistic depiction of a woman's face with her eyes downcast and her head resting on her hand.