TÊTE DITE “LE TUNNEL” – HEAD CALLED “THE TUNNEL”    

1932 -1933

Medium : Iron, cast, welded

Dimensions : 46,7 x 21,8 x 30,9 cm

A return to the theme of Les amoureux (The Lovers) 

The main element of this sculpture is a horizontal, cylindrical form closed at one extremity by a spherical, helmet-shaped form. This creates a deep, shadowy hole, in other words, the tunnel evoked in the work’s title.

This closely resembles the central element of two of González’s previous sculptures, entitled Les amoureux I and Les amoureux II (The Lovers I and II), both conserved at the IVAM Centre Julio González. Though Tête dite “Le tunnel” was created after these two sculptures, it signifies González’s return to the theme of Les amoureux in a finalized, more elaborate and larger version.

The decomposition and enhanced poetic quality of forms

The motif that serves as a point of departure for the series is a sort of funnel formed by two faces engaged in a kiss, which melt/combine into one sole head. In Les amoureux, the kiss-funnel is represented by the broken line of the cut of an iron plate that the artist soldered to the mouth/opening of the hole, and that interpenetrates with the complementary and empty form of the shadow within. In Tête dite “Le tunnel”, the funnel shape of the kiss isn’t soldered to the opening of the hole, but rather affixed separately in front of it, and supported by a vertical rod. Furthermore, the broken cut line has disintegrated and been converted into two floating triangles of which the sharp extremities point towards the dark interior of the tunnel.

Even though the principal forms of Tête dite “Le tunnel” are roughly geometrical, González underlines the poetic quality of the sculpture by slightly deforming the volumes. He accentuates the impression of irregularity through the treatment of the textures of iron, carefully hammered and polished in an organic tremor that is enhanced by the reflection of light.

Building freely on the void

In a short introductory text for his exhibition organized at the Galerie Percier (Paris) in 1934, Maurice Raynal writes that “audacity pushed González to no longer consider the void only as a sort of framed mirror, a lake bounded by land, a sampling of sky flanked by the rooftops of houses, but rather as a kind of solid element on which one can freely build. Like the invisible trace of an arrow encloses a portion of space, the line of a blade of iron simply sketched, primes and traces in the light all the elegance of a body. And there, in the void, is something like a memory embodied that the weight and its former horror of the void suggested in our eyes for the most ideal plastic expression”.

Les amoureux II, 1932-1933, IVAM Centre Julio González

Text: Tomás Llorens
Translations of texts by Tomás Llorens from Spanish, by Maurice Raynal from French: Amanda Herold-Marme