Artist

Roberta Gonzalez

(1909-1976)

Roberta Gonzalez was born in 1909 of a French mother and Julio Gonzalez the Spanish sculptor precursor and initiator of Picasso in the art of iron sculpture. His brother is exposed in the Louvre, in the family there are only artists. In 1939, she married Hans Hartung, a master of abstraction which she divorced in 1956. Despite such an environment, Roberta Gonzalez remains herself and gives us a personal work dominated by his passion for birds, flaming suns and faces Dumb.
His life has always been closely tied to his father's. In 1939 she married the German painter Hans Hartung. After becoming interested in the works of the surrealist painters who frequented her father's studio, she found herself completely in agreement with the work of Hans Hartung. She paints heads, nudes, elements of still lifes, birds, reducing them to their simplest sign, several of these signs appearing on the same canvas in narrative relations of subject to 'direct object complement'.
After the death of Julio González in 1942 and the occupation of the whole of France, Hans and Roberta passed in 1943 in Spain. Incarcerated, then placed in a concentration camp for seven months, Hartung joined North Africa and re-entered the Legion. Seriously wounded during the attack on Belfort in November 1944, he was amputated his right leg in Dijon. Returning to Paris in 1945, where he was assisted by Calder, he was naturalized French in 1946, decorated with the Croix de Guerre 1939-1945, the Military Medal and the Legion of Honor.
In 1953, Hans Hartung settles again with Anna-Eva Bergman, returned from Norway, and divorces in 1956 of with Roberta Gonzalez.
The Cour 16 gallery recommends that you read Catherine Valogne's excellent work on Roberta Gonzalez, published in 1971, prefaced by Guy Marester, poet, art critic in 'Combat' in the aftermath of the war; Book composed of interviews and reflections, extracted from the artist's notebooks.
► Individual exhibitions:
Jeanne Bucher Gallery, Paris, 1948
Colette Allendy Gallery, Paris, 1951
Peggy Salles Gallery, USA, 1954
Nina Dausset Gallery, Paris, 1954
Kunstkabinet Gallery, Frankfurt, 1954
Mary Library of the Museum, Paris, 1955
Urbis Gallery Club, Madrid, 1960
Galerie de France, 'The Three González' 1965

► Collective exhibitions:
Castelucho Gallery, Paris, 1933
'The Spaniards of Paris' 1945, Oran Prague 1946 Fine Arts Gallery, Hallemark Prize ', 1949 Biennial of Turin, 1949 Critics' Prize, Paris, 1951
Exhibition Critics Award, Tokyo, 1955
Bibliography: E. Bénézit, Critical and Documentary Dictionary of Painters Sculptors and Engravers Gründ 1999

Selected work

Roberta Gonzalez, Profil 1964

Post-cubism
Ink or pencil drawing
Ink and wash on paper
32 x 24 cm
Signed, dated and signed lower right