Veronica
Artist
Gilda Snowden
(American, 1954-2014)
Date1981
MediumOil on shaped canvas
Dimensions16 1/2 × 60 × 5 in. (41.9 × 152.4 × 12.7 cm)
ClassificationsPainting
Credit LineGift of James Pearson Duffy, 1992
Object numberUAC725
Description“Veronica” is a work that was featured in the artist’s first solo exhibition at the Willis Gallery, in Detroit, in 1981. The title of this work refers to the maneuver a matador makes during a Spanish bullfighting. The movement, verónica, is a fundamental moment when the bull has run towards the cape and the matador gracefully pulls the cape along the bull’s horn. Equally graceful, Snowden has shaped the lower ends of her long horizontal canvas, mimicking that of the baroque moment of the bull’s horns under the matador’s cape. The inclusion of messy, dramatic dark red along the bottom of the canvas draws allusion to the ultimate ending of the bull fight.Gilda Snowden, a prominent Detroit artist, received a BFA and MFA from Wayne State University. From 1985 until her early death, she was a Professor of Fine Arts at the College for Creative Studies and in 2009 she was awarded the prestigious Kresge Artist Fellowship. The work was purchased, and later donated, by James Pearson Duffy a passionate collector of Detroit Cass Corridor art (Detroit’s first avant-garde movement). Snowden is considered a second generation Cass Corridor artist, in that she worked alongside the first generation who were on faculty at Wayne State University.
Fiorucci
2/25/18
Collections
