BUSTE FÉMININ – FEMALE TORSO
1935 -1936
Medium : Iron, cast, cut, bent
Dimensions : 48,5 x 26,8 x 14,5 cm
Female Torso, 1935-1936, bronze cast of a sculpture in forged, cut and bent iron
Buste féminin (Female Torso) is a sculpture in forged, cut and bent iron sheet metal, executed by Julio González around 1935-1936. It depicts a female torso, displayed frontally, from the hips through the narrowed waist line, and up to the shoulders. The curves of the rounded neckline and breasts contrast with the jagged contours and sharp angles cut into the sheet metal in certain places, for example at the waist.
In Female Torso, González continues his sculptural experimentation focused on individual parts of the human body, which he begins in the mid-1930s. After his works on the border of abstraction in the early 1930s, these works reconnect more directly with observed reality, while retaining their innovative character.
Like The Foot and The Forehead, two roughly contemporary works, the subject announced in the title is only partially outlined in tangible form. Once again, the void is called upon as a constructive element to make the form whole.
Furthermore, the jagged contours and cut angles of Female Torso are tangible traces of the artist’s own intervention in the creative process. At the same time, the brokenness they suggest reinforces the impression that this metallic sculpture is a fragment of an ancient sculpture in stone or marble.
The result is a piece that is both naturalistic and abstracted, fragile and monumental, timeless and decidedly modern.
