Gonzalez, Julio (1876-1942), Spanish-born sculptor, a pioneer in constructed metal sculpture. Born in Barcelona to a family of metalworkers, Gonzalez learned the trade in his father's shop. Desiring to be a painter, he studied in Barcelona and then moved to Paris, France, in 1900, where he became part of the influential group of artists and writers that included Spanish painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso. After his brother's death in 1908, Gonzalez gave up painting and returned to metalworking. In 1918 Gonzalez worked at a metal works in Boulogne-sur-Seine to learn oxyacetylene welding, a process that he would later use in his sculpture.
In the mid-1920s, Gonzalez began making welded-iron sculptures.

He worked with Picasso for a few years on a series of sculptures, advising Picasso on metalworking techniques and most likely being influenced by the latter's artistic ideas. During this time his own work, which became abstract, open, and linear, gained wider acclaim. He made his most famous piece, La Montserrat (1936-1937, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands), for the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris Exposition Universelle. The work, a sheet-metal depiction of a woman holding a child in her arms, protested Fascist oppression in Spain. With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Gonzalez was banned from using welding-gas for anything other than the war effort, and he turned to making drawings and watercolor studies for sculpture.

Gonzalez's sculpture introduced materials and techniques to the realm of fine art that formerly had been confined to utilitarian or decorative pieces. He influenced the work of later metal sculptors such as American artist David Smith and British artists Reg Butler and Anthony Caro. All contemporary constructed steel sculpture has its roots in the work of Gonzalez.