FEMME SE COIFFANT II – WOMAN COMBING HER HAIR II
1934
Medium : Iron, cast, welded
Dimensions : 121 x 60 x 29 cm
The theme of the woman combing her hair, or “à sa toilette”, previously the subject of an iron sculpture by González in 1931 (Femme se coiffant I), returns three years later in another important work, entitled Femme se coiffant II. However, the two works are quite different. The first stems from the observation of a model, whose volumes were profoundly analyzed and extremely dematerialized by the artist, though the proportions of the model remain largely unchanged. The second version, though, strays from the proportions of the human body. The main reference to the model is the articulation of the hips, represented with an asymmetrical set of planes in contrapposto.
In the many existing preparatory drawings of the sculpture, we notice that, although the articulation of the hips remains a constant, the rest of the forms are configured according to diverse variations. In the definitive sculpture, the bottom half is characterized by a somewhat mechanical austerity, while the top is treated in a fanciful way. The wide, ascending curve that forms the arms holding the hair opens upwards in an asymmetrical embrace. The face has disappeared, though two minuscule eyes, suggested by the heads of two nails resembling insect antennae, allude to the place where they should be positioned. All that remains of the form of the head is an oval profile which expands to occupy a large part of the top half of the sculpture. This oval also opens in an ascending embrace. And, to mark the ambivalence of these two arcs open upwards, González culminates its four ends with a cluster of fine metal rods which allude to hair.
Between the two versions of Femme se coiffant, there is a notable difference in the morphology. Though the first is constructed as an assembly of material and virtual planes, the second is formed almost exclusively of lines, especially in the top half. In fact, Femme se coiffant II is one of the works that is the most emblematic of González’s linear style.
As we can see in other works from the period, like Grande maternité, (Large Mother and Child) created in 1934, this style corresponds to what González himself called the « new art » of « draw[ing] in space ». The expression appears in his unfinished manuscript entitled Picasso sculpteur et les cathedrals (Picasso, sculptor and cathedrals). Here is a quotation:
As in the restlessness of the night, the stars mark out points of hope in the sky, [so too] this immobile spire marks out an infinite number of them to us. It is these points in the infinite which are the precursors of this new art: To draw in space.
The real problem to be solved here is not only to wish to make a harmonious work, of a fine and perfectly balanced whole—No! But to get this [result] by the marriage of material and space, by the union of real forms with imagined forms, obtained or suggested by established points, or by perforations, and, according to the natural law of love, to mingle and make them inseparable one from another, as are the body and the spirit.
(French text translated to English in Josephine Withers, Sculpture in iron, p. 134.)
Text by Tomas Llorens, translated by Amanda Herold-Marme
