LE BAISER I – THE KISS I
1930
Medium : Iron, cast, welded
Dimensions : 26,7 x 28,3 x 9,5 cm
Le baiser, 1930
Cut, polished and soldered iron 26,7 x 28,5 x 8,5 cm
Original synthetic resin base 12 x 12 x 12 cm
Signed and dated on the back, “J. González/1930”
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart
Two abstract faces
This work is composed of two frontally-presented identical ovals, made from partially superposed iron platens; their vertical axes are displaced like the ribs of an open hand-held fan. Two very abstract faces, made of voided lozenges, melt into a kiss. The superposition of six iron rectangles of various sizes, placed in front of and behind the ovals, create complex volumes. Planes cut into each other like in the inside of a crystallized mineral, forming a network of very sharp or obtuse dihedral angles. The volumes are open and aerial, lacking mass, imbued with visual transparency.
Sculpture, a late-blooming artistic vocation
Le Baiser is a sculpture signed and dated 1930. For Julio González, 1930 is a crucial year. Late to come into his own as an artist, González only decides to dedicate his efforts exclusively to sculpture, his true vocation, in 1929, at 53 years of age. The contract signed that year with the Galerie de France, promising his metallic sculpture exclusively to the gallery, reaffirms this sculptural vocation. The first exhibition takes place in 1930, featuring reliefs and masks; the second, in early 1931, includes Le Baiser, González’s first important sculpture.
Picasso and González, a fertile collaboration
1930 is also a very busy year for the artist. In addition to preparing works for his first exhibition of metallic sculpture, González collaborates with Picasso in a consuming task: the realization of Apollinaire’s funeral monument. Their collaboration had begun in October 1928, and continued through 1932. It bears is first fruits in the form of a small-scale sculpture, representing a kiss, also configured as two overlapping profiles, painted on two plans which meet in a dihedral angle. The concept is similar to that of the Le Baiser, but the latter work takes shape much differently. The head conceived by Picasso, and created by González, is simple and spontaneous. It is imbibed with an expressivity emblematic of children’s or primitive art.
On the threshold of abstraction
On the other hand, the work conceived and realized by González is complex and elaborate. Its geometry of rectangles and ovals is reminiscent of the purism and abstraction practiced by the group Cercle et Carré. Indeed, their first exhibition had taken place in Spring 1930 in which González’s friends and acquaintances take part, namely the painter Joaquim Torres-García.
In the preface of the catalogue for González’s 1931 exhibition at the Galerie de France, journalist and art critic Lucien Farnoux-Reynaud qualifies his sculpture as an art “of abstention (…) made from asceticism and intellectual speculation”. Though González never manages to join the ranks of the Cercle et carré group, Le Baiser shows his readiness in 1930 to position himself at the threshold of abstraction. Nonetheless, this would be short-lived; he quickly abandons this pursuit, steering his work in a more expressive and personal direction.
Text by Tomas Llorens (translated by Amanda Herold-Marme)
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