González is regarded as the pioneer of welded iron sculpture. He learned oxyacetylene welding while working at the Renault car factory during the First World War. The tensile strength of iron allowed him to create three-dimensional forms without filling in the volume, an effect that he described as ‘drawing in space’. Many of his works show a concern with the human figure, often in a highly abstracted form. In this work, a cylindrical head is placed above a trapezium neck, with suspended triangles to indicate features.

Julio González was born in Barcelona, 21 Sept 1876 and died in Arceuil, near Paris in 1942.