Henri Laurens, who associated closely with the avant-garde painters of his native Paris, worked in a Cubist idiom from 1915. In about 1920 he turned from the production of bas-reliefs and frontalized constructions to the execution of more classically ordered, freestanding sculptures. Head of a Young Girl may have appeared originally as a drawing. However, in this bust Laurens expresses Cubist painting principles in essentially sculptural terms. The tilted surfaces and geometric volumes of the sculpture interpenetrate to constitute a compact whole. Circling the piece, the viewer perceives dramatically different aspects of the head, which provide a variety of visual experiences unexpected in a form so schematically reduced. The structuring planes of one side of the head are broad and unadorned; its edges and planar junctures form strong, uninterrupted curves and straight lines. The other side is articulated with detail; its jagged, hewn contour describing hair contrasts rhythmically with the sweeping curve of the opposite cheek. Laurens slices into the polyhedron that determines the facial planes to describe nose, upper lip, and chin at one stroke. The subtle modeling, particularly of the almond eye and simplified mouth, produces nuanced relations of light and shadow. Despite the geometric clarity of structure, the delicacy of the young girl’s features and her self-contained pose create a gentle, meditative quality.

Head of a Young Girl
(Tête de jeune fillette)
terracotta
1920
Henri Laurens (1885-1954)
Paris, France

#cubism #cubistsculpture #sculpture #art #henrilaurens #france #frenchmodernism #modernism #vintagemodern #headofayoundgirl #terracotta #modernart #modernsculpture #frenchsculpture #c1920 #paris

Guitar Player
patinated bronze
1918
Jacques Lipchitz (1891-1973)
France

#cubism #cubistsculpture #guitarplayer #jacqueslipchitz #sculpture #art #modernart #modernsculpture #cubistart #france #frenchmodernism #modernism #design

Julio González was born in Barcelona on September 21, 1876. With his older brother Joan he worked in his father’s metalsmith shop; during the evenings they took classes at the Escuela de Bellas Artes. González exhibited metalwork at the Exposición de bellas artes e industrias artísticas in Barcelona in 1892, 1896, and 1898, and at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. In 1897 he began to frequent Els Quatre Gats, a café in Barcelona, where he met Pablo Picasso. In 1900 González moved to Paris; there he began to associate with Pablo Gargallo, Juan Gris, Manolo Hugué, Max Jacob, and Jaime Sabartés. His first embossed metalwork was produced in 1900. He exhibited with the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1903, 1909, and frequently during the early 1920s. González participated in the Salon des Indépendants in 1907 and occasionally thereafter. He first exhibited paintings at the Salon d’Automne in 1909, and showed both sculpture and paintings there regularly in the 1910s and 1920s. In 1918 González worked at the Renault factory at Boulogne-Billancourt, where he learned the techniques of autogenous welding he used later in iron sculptures. In 1920 he became reacquainted with Picasso. González’s first solo exhibition, which included paintings, sculptures, drawings, jewelry, and objets d’art, was held in 1922 at the Galerie Povolovsky in Paris. The following year he was given a solo show of works in similarly varied media at the Galerie du Caméléon in Paris. In 1923 González participated in the first Salon du Montparnasse, Paris, with Raoul Dufy, Paco Durrio, Friesz, and others. In 1924 he was included in the exhibition Les Amis du Montparnasse at the Salon des Tuileries and the Salon d’Automne in Paris. He made his first iron sculptures in 1927. From 1928 to 1931 González provided technical assistance to Picasso in executing sculptures in iron.

In 1930 he was given a solo sculpture exhibition at the Galerie de France in Paris, and the following year showed at the Salon des Surindépendants for the first time. In 1937 he contributed to the Spanish Pavilion of the World’s Fair in Paris and Cubism and Abstract Art at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Gonzáles died in Arcueil, near Paris, on March 27, 1942.

Monsieur Cactus (Cactus Man I)
bronze
1939 (cast 1953–54)
Julio González (1876-1942)
b. Spain d. France

#cactusman #monsieurcactus #bronze #sculpture #abstract #figurative #modernism #modernistsculpture #cubism #cubistsculpture #surrealism #surrealistart #juliogonzalez #c1939 #art #cubistsculpture

Head of a Woman is one of a group of folded sheet-metal sculptures Picasso made in the 1950s and 1960s. In the sheet-metal sculptures, Picasso used intersecting, planar surfaces to generate works that confounded expectations of the continuous three-dimensional contours typical of much modern sculpture. Works such as Head of a Woman (Tête de femme) present not so much multiple views of the same subject as specific, sharply delineated glimpses of individual, recognizable forms, such as a nose seen in profile or from the front. In the sheet-metal sculptures, we become aware of how little it takes to be able to recognize a line and a dot, for example, as an eye—and how quickly a glance at another surface of the same work can reconfigure that initial impression.

Head of a Woman (Tête de femme)
also called Head of Jacqueline
Painted steel
1957
Pablo Picasso

#sculpture #modernsculpture #art #pablopicasso #cubism #cubistsculpture #perception #thought #headofawoman #headofjacqueline #paintedsteel #c1957 #picassosculpture

Reader II
Limestone
1919
Jacques Lipchitz
(1891-1973, France)

#sculpture #cubism #cubistsculpture #jacqueslipchitz #limestone #c1919 #Paris #france #frenchmodernism #modernism #moderndesign #modernsculpture #20thcenturyart #art

Beginning in 1900, young painters and sculptors of all nationalities migrated to the Paris neighborhood of Montparnasse, the city’s hub of avant-garde activity. Despite their different approaches and interests, the artists of the so-called School of Paris fostered an inspiring climate of imaginative cross-fertilization that helped to sustain the idea of Paris as the center of artistic activity until the beginning of World War II. Jacques Lipchitz moved to Paris in 1909, and through his friendships with Diego Rivera, Pablo Picasso, and others, he participated in the Cubist movement. His bas-reliefs and sculptures in the round communicate the geometric and fractured forms and the favored subject matter (musicians and seated bathers, for example) of contemporary Cubist paintings.

Seated Figure
limestone
1917
Jacques Lipchitz
(1891–1973)

#jacqueslipchitz #france #seatedfigure #sculpture #dated1917 #cubism #cubistsculpture #art #cubistart

An abstract sculpture of a human head in the cubist style.

Conundrum, epoxy clay and mixed media. I was definitely going for a cubist version of Munch’s ‘The Scream.’

#cubist #cubistsculpture #conundrum