“Monsieur ” Cactus (Cactus Man I) | The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation 30/8/20 23:50

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Julio González
“Monsieur ” Cactus (Cactus Man I)
"Monsieur " Cactus [Homme Cactus I]
Artist
During the late 1930s Julio Julio González
González worked simultaneously in b. 1876, Barcelona;
d. 1942, Arcueil,
naturalistic and abstract idioms.
France
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Resources exemplified by “Monsieur” Cactus Date
Art Iron original
of 1939, in which he returns to the completed August
Join & Give metamorphic theme of several 24, 1939, Arceuil;
Research earlier sculptures. As in works by cast 1953–54
Tickets other Spanish artists living abroad
Shop Medium
during the Civil War, the figure is Bronze and patina
anguished—see, for example, Joan
Search Miró’s Seated Woman II or Pablo Dimensions
23 5/16 x 9 13/16
Picasso’s Guernica of 1937. Indeed,
x 6 11/16 inches
Today’s Schedule > several of the more literal (64.3 x 25 x 17
preparatory drawings for the cm)
sculpture, dating from December
of 1938, suggest that the figure is Credit Line
The Solomon R.
shrieking; the prickly nails intensify Guggenheim
the aggressive effect of the work, Foundation​ Peggy
recalling Picasso’s use of nails in his Guggenheim
Collection, Venice,
Guitar of 1926. Though the
1976
distortion and dislocation of
anatomical features make positive Accession
identification difficult, with the aid 76.2553.136

of the drawings one can read a

Copyright
raised arm joined to the hip, its five © 2018 Artists
fingers spread like a cluster of Rights Society
cylindrical cactus stems. The (ARS), New
York/ADAGP, Paris
analogous five-fingered block to the

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“Monsieur ” Cactus (Cactus Man I) | The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation 30/8/20 23:50

left of the torso seems to be Artwork Type

Sculpture
lowered to a position just above an
angular phallus.

The companion to this sculpture,

known as Cactus Man II or
“Madame” Cactus, has been
interpreted as the image of the
Spanish peasant’s defiance of
Franco’s fascist threat.¹ While the
synthesis of human being and
cactus may reflect the identification
of the Spanish peasant with the
land, the metamorphic figure may
more generally personify the
republican cause. At the end of
1938 Franco launched a major
offensive against Catalonia,
González’s native province, and was
to take its capital, Barcelona, in
January of 1939, signaling the end
of republican hopes. By the time
the drawings for the second cactus
sculpture appeared in the summer
of 1939, Madrid had fallen and
Franco’s Falange was in full power.

Lucy Flint

1. E. A. Carmean, “Cactus Man

Number Two,” The Museum of Fine
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“Monsieur ” Cactus (Cactus Man I) | The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation 30/8/20 23:50

Arts, Houston: Bulletin (Fall 1973),

p. 41. For a discussion of the titles
and the meanings of the two works,
see Margit Rowell, Julio González:
A Retrospective, exh. cat. (New
York: Solomon R. Guggenheim
Foundation, 1983), pp. 188, 195.

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