Avant-Garde Sculpture (II)

Revision

Evolution

• The decisive step towards modern sculpture consisted of the addition of combination and construction to previous methods of sculpting and modelling.

• The use of sheet iron and wires was connected with it.

Gargallo

• Pablo Gargallo was already cutting figures and masks out of sheet copper.

• Interested in tribal art, he may have linked the Spanish tradition with observation of hammered and chased African metalwork.

• He made of it his own speciality.

Gargallo

• He used the assemblage technique to create his images.

• The emptiness of some areas doted his work of great drama.

• He avoided the use of symmetry and some of his images are full of strength such as The Prophet.

Julio Gonzalez

• Julio Gonzalez was an expert blacksmith

• Gonzalez’s works established the new art form of iron sculpture.

• Owing to the material and the technique, the volume of a figure was reproduced by rods reaching into and surrounding space, by surfaces and rounded walls.

Julio Gonzalez

• His work involved an inner penetration of figure and space that Gonzalez made the principle of his sculpture.

• The representations became, if not exactly abstract, at least figurative spatial diagrams

Calder

• He was the artist who produced the most delicate wire sculpture.

• This mechanical engineer invented the toy like party mobile wire figures more suited to him.

Calder

• He put into practice the futuristic programme of sculpture made mobile with the help of hand- or motor-driven apparatuses.

• His forms are combined with primary colours or are just a collection of wires.

• He also produced big format sculptures.

Giacometti

• During his formation he knew Rodin’s work, and when he went to Paris he entered in contact with all the previous avant-garde sculpture attempts.

• He knew from ethnic works to those of the most important artists of the moment (Matisse, Picasso, Brancusi).

Giacometti

• He entered in contact with the surrealist and due to this his sculptures live because of their significant plastic formulation and the endless possible ways of interpreting them.

• His work in the thirties acquired the disturbing dimension which characterizes the Surrealism.

Giacometti• From 1935 to 1945 he sought to

reproduce the outward appearance of figures and heads as we see them in reality:– in the distance, – in space, – as a part of a much larger field of

vision. • He strove to introduce perspective

into sculpture, making use of the methods employed by painters, such as– a decrease in size and– vaguer definition as the distance

increases, large bases to set the figures off.

Giacometti

• He discovered that making distant figures smaller was an unsatisfactory way of recreating reality.

• He found that the more accurate way of depicting people was their extreme elongation and slimness.

• His images are armatures of iron rods and plaster.

• His work sometimes remembers the finish used by Rodin in Caen’s Bourgeoisies.