This document discusses several avant-garde sculptors and their techniques from the early 20th century. Pablo Gargallo pioneered the use of sheet metal and assemblage techniques to create dramatic sculptures. Julio Gonzalez was a blacksmith who used iron rods to reproduce figures and penetrate space. Alexander Calder was known for his delicate wire sculptures and mobile sculptures. Alberto Giacometti experimented with surrealism and sought to realistically depict figures in space through elongation and using armatures. He discovered this approach more accurately portrayed the appearance of people at a distance.

1. Avant-Garde Sculpture (II)
Revision

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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).

10. 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.

11. 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

12. 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.