Julio Gonzalez moved in 1900 to Paris, where his contact with the most innovative and powerful modern art led, as one would expect, to a vitalization of his own artistic conceptions. He arrived at a style of his own through his attempts to incorporate space and time into his work, and in so doing he changed the meaning of iron, endowing it with new constructive and expressive values. His work made a definitive impact on the development of contemporary sculpture. Though his output was small, his influence on such master sculptors as David Smith - - a distant pupil - - is testimony to the eloquence of his art. This ambitious publishing project (for which seven volumes are planned) focuses on the artist's complete oeuvre and is the result of the initiative of Tomas Llorens, former director of the Reina Sofia Museum, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum both of which are in Madrid, and the IVAM in Valencia, which holds over 400 works by Julio Gonzalez in its collection. Published in collaboration with the IVAM and the Azcona Foundation in Madrid.

This is the inaugural volume of a planned seven-volume catalogue raisonne on the Spanish sculptor Julio Gonzalez (1876-1942). The son of a goldsmith in Barcelona, Gonzalez studied painting and sculpture from an early age. Upon moving to Paris in 1900, he joined the company of fellow Spanish artists such as Juan Gris, Pablo Gargallo and Pablo Picasso. Today, Gonzalez is primarily known for his work in welded iron. Abstracted figures such his "'Monsieur' Cactus" (1939) show a connection to the Cubist sculptures of Picasso, with whom Gonzalez worked closely from the 1920s onward. Credited with introducing Picasso to welded sculpture, Gonzalez was also an important influence on the American Abstract Expressionist sculptor David Smith. This monumental project is published in collaboration with the Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno in Spain, which possesses the largest collection of Gonzalez's work.