Presentation of the exhibition “BEING AN ARTIST. Julio Gonzalez”

Juan José Lahuerta, curator of the exhibition, and Nuria Enguita, director of IVAM, invite us to the presentation of “SER ARTISTA. Julio González”, a review of the Julio González background from the IVAM Collection which aims to cast new light on this great artist’s work, moving away from certain myths about his life and his works that have persisted since the middle of the last century.

This new presentation of the work of Julio González is based on a study of the collection without prejudice of the operational history: forgetting González to discover its complexity, as a piece of art and as a collection. Considering all of the “stages”, all of the “themes” and all of the “arts” as equal, in the contexts given to us by the extraordinary archive materials (documents, photographs, etc.), and the history of their era(s).

Juan José Lahuerta is a professor of the History of Art at the Barcelona School of Architecture and director of the Gaudí Chair. He has taught at universities including the IUAV in Venice or New York University, among others. He has been Head of Collections at the National Art Museum of Catalonia and Senior Curator at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona. He has published books about art and architecture, including, for example, 1927. La abstracción necesaria (1989); Antoni Gaudí, 1852-1926. Architettura, ideologia e politica (1992); Le Corbusier. Espagne. Carnets (2001); Estudios antiguos (2009); Humaredas. Arquitectura, ornamentación y medios impresos (2010); Religious Painting. Picasso and Max Von Moos (2015); Marginalia. Aby Warburg, Carl Einstein (2015); Photography or Life: Popular Mies (2015); On Loos, Ornament, and Crime (2015); Antoni Gaudí. Ornament, Fire, and Ashes (2016); Arte en la época del infierno (2021); and the catalogue of the exhibition held at the MNAC in Barcelona and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, Gaudí (2022). He is a member of the Casabella Scientific Council and founder and director of Mudito&Co publishing company.