Julio Gonzalez: Paintings and Drawings 1900-1940

June 21 – August 20, 1988

Kent Fine Art is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Julio Gonzalez. This is the first exhibition of his work since the retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in 1983, and focuses primarily on Gonzalez’s gifts as a draftsman and painter in the Catalan tradition.

His paintings, executed in a flat fresco style with emphasis on masses, are interesting in their initiation of themes he would develop throughout his lifetime, and in their stylistic references to Puvis de Chavannes or affinities with Picasso and the Barcelona school . . . His drawings are a startling confirmation of the uniformity of the turn-of-the century School of Barcelona style. . . reveal(ing) a natural graphic facility and exhibit(ing) the skills of a consummate craftsman. (Margarit Rowell, “Julio Gonzalez: Technique, Syntax, Context,” in 1983 Guggenheim retrospective catalogue)

Gonzalez is best known for his sculpture collaboration with Picasso, and his subsequent pioneering of welded sculpture which highly influenced David Smith as a well as other American sculptors.