Julio González

Head with a Long Neck

1939

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Artist: Julio González 1876–1942
Original title: Tête au long cou
Medium: Ink and crayon on paper
Dimensions: Support: 330 × 241 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by Mme Roberta Gonzalez-Richard, the artist's niece 1972
Reference: T01617

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González used drawing as a primary way of exploring his ideas. These drawings, made over a six-year period, show how his abstract idiom was rooted in reality and, especially, in the figure. González concentrated on upright structures that, if translated into sculpture, would make use of the strength and balance available from welded iron. This group gives a sense of his inventiveness as he worked towards images with a high emotional charge.

Gallery label, August 2004

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Catalogue entry

Julio Gonzalez 1876-1942

T01617 Tête au Long Cou (Head with a Long Neck) 1939

Inscribed '1-2-39 | J.G.' b.l.
Pen, ink and crayon on buff paper, 13 x 9 1/2 (33 x 24.2)
Presented by Roberta Gonzalez 1972
Lit: Josette Gibert, Julio Gonzalez Dessins: Scènes Paysannes (Paris 1975), p.344 repr.

Gibert, op. cit., pp.342-3 reproduces two drawings done the previous day which are earlier versions of the same theme.

This drawing and T01618-20 are examples of Gonzalez's various experiments with invented heads - paraphrases of the human head - from late 1938 onwards.

[All the drawings by Julio Gonzalez given to the Tate are authenticated on the back by his daughter Roberta Gonzalez and inscribed with a title and date, or approximate date. The titles are used in the catalogue entries, but the dating has been made more precise wherever possible. (Julio Gonzalez's drawings are usually dated from about 1934 onwards, but the great majority of the early drawings are undated).]

Published in:
Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, p.319, reproduced p.319