Ink and Iron: revisiting Picasso’s metal monuments to Apollinaire

This essay revisits and reassesses the most important metal sculptures Picasso made with Julio González between 1928 and 1932. Reference to Picasso’s sketchbooks and to drawings dating back as far as 1912, shows how his creative strategy was underpinned by purposeful continuity and persistent research and development. Picasso’s ideas on the use of sheet metal, wire and empty space in sculpture seem to have taken nearly twenty years to mature. There is renewed discussion here of how aspects of Apollinaire’s fiction and journalism, including his writings on ethnographic museums, inspired metal sculptures Picasso designed for the poet’s grave in Père-Lachaise cemetery. Providing new information on possible contacts between Apollinaire and Julio González before the First World War, the essay comments on sculptures Picasso made with González and on the current condition of the bronze Femme au jardin. The juxtaposition of the iron and bronze versions of this sculpture, presented side-by-side in the 2016 Picasso.Sculptures exhibition at the musée Picasso in Paris, prompts discussion here of similarities and differences between the two works. The essay also raises questions regarding the status of the various enlargements of the 1928 wire maquettes, made at various times from the 1950s to the 1980s.