Femme au miroir 1934

Julio Gonzalez made this sculpture, *Femme au miroir*, out of iron. The artist seems to be thinking about the figure, but without using solid volume. How do you represent a body in space? By making wireframe gestures and attenuated shapes. Gonzalez makes a drawing of an abstract body in thin iron rods, assembled into something solid. The artist probably wants you to think about Picasso – he worked alongside him, after all. Picasso’s cubist portraits broke down the face into planes, and, in this work, Gonzalez seems to break down the body in space, and re-assemble it. You see the bare bones of the figure, a metal armature or skeleton that alludes to our own. It reminds me that we're all walking armatures, too!