Screaming Head with a White Veil

Catalogue entry

Julio González 1876-1942

T01631 Tête criant au Voile blanc (Screaming Head with a White Veil) 1941

Inscribed '28-5-41 | J.G.' b.l.
Ink and oil paint on off-white paper, 12 1/2 x 9 3/8 (31.7 x 23.9)
Presented by Roberta González 1972
Lit: Josette Gibert, Julio González Dessins: Portraits (Paris 1975), p.126 repr.
Repr: Vicente Aguilera Cerni, Julio Joan Roberta González: Itinerario de una Dinastía (Barcelona 1973), p.249, pl.198 in colour; Ronald Alley, The González Gift to the Tate Gallery (London 1974), p.44

González made a number of drawings of a woman with a veil over her head from January 1940 onwards, apparently at first with the Virgin Mary in mind. There are at least eight drawings on this theme dating from April 1941 and a further fourteen dated May 1941. The earliest versions are comparatively naturalistic, the later ones, especially from about 9 May onwards, increasingly distorted and agonised. This first series seems to have culminated in this particular work, which is the last and much the most complete, though there is also a similar but much less ambitious pencil study dated 17 July 1941 (Gibert, op. cit., p.127).

See also T01635.

[All the drawings by Julio González given to the Tate are authenticated on the back by his daughter Roberta González 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 González'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, pp.324-5, reproduced p.324

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