FEMME À LA CORBEILLE

1934

Médium: Fer, forgé, soudé

Dimensions: 180 x 63 x 63 cm

“Femme à la corbeille (Woman with a Basket)”, is a linear sculpture in iron executed by Julio González in 1934.

González revisits here the motif of a peasant woman, the most represented theme in his body of work. Contrary to his classical depictions through the 1920s, here, the body has been simplified and streamlined to a series of metallic lines that outline her silhouette: vertical rods for the legs, one bent to suggest a twisting, contrapposto stance (with one straight leg bearing weight). The legs attach to either side of a horizontal in the middle, suggesting the articulation of the hips. The vertical of the straight leg extends upwards to support a U-shaped rod, the figure’s shoulders, which join lines reaching upwards to suggest the raised arms holding the basket, evoked by a horizontal circle. The diagonal lines underneath the basket, attached to the U, represent the figure’s hair, and a hanging, double L shaped motif in the middle evokes two eyes.

This work is one of the clearest expressions of González’s innovative artistic principle of “drawing in space”. This experienced Catalan metalworker revolutionized metallic sculpture by applying autogenous welding, an industrial technique, to his artistic practice. This allowed him to fashion elongated, streamlined silhouettes with iron rods, like this one, as though he were making a three-dimensional drawing. Empty space completes the volumes the metal contours suggest, for example, in the bent leg. The result is a graceful and harmonious depiction of the female body in movement.

This work was donated to the Musée national d’art moderne by Roberta González, and is now housed at the Pompidou Center in Paris.