Early in 1970 I was asked by the Tate Gallery to write the catalogue introduction for a projected González exhibition. I accepted, wrote the piece, and my essay was sent in manuscript as a matter of courtesy to the artist’s representative in Paris, the Galerie de France. The reaction was angry and immediate: my text could not be altered or modified—it must be deleted from the catalogue or the sculpture would not be released for the London exhibition. I had no choice but to withdraw; it was important that a good selection of González’s work be seen for the first time in England, if belatedly to say the least, after his influence had been substantial on two successive generations, the so-called “geometry of fear” sculptors of the Fifties, and my own generation of abstract sculptors in the Sixties.
Rereading that essay today (it was printed unchanged in my Early Modern Sculpture), and reconsidering González’s oeuvre as seen in the present show at the Guggenheim,[1] I feel the protective response of his agents in 1970 was possibly justified. They were, after all, trying to secure for González the standing of a major modem master, if not the equal of Picasso, then certainly not far behind, at least the equal of Brancusi and David Smith. González’s doubt, modesty, and caution were not qualities to be proclaimed at that moment, in those circumstances.
Today, in this country, especially in the light of David Smith’s achievement and his continuous and
