Virginia True

American, 1900 - 1989

BiographyVirginia True was an artist active in the American Southwest in the 1920s and 1930s, particularly in Colorado, where she taught at UC Boulder and was a member of the Colorado collective, The Prospectors. She returned regularly during summers after she moved to Ithaca, New York, to get her MFA at Cornell University, where she stayed to teach until she retired in 1965. Her subject matter included Western landscapes and coastal landscapes, including Cape Cod; but also figurative work. In addition, she created a mural of women and labor at Cornell University in 1937. True also studied in Indianapolis with William Forsyth and was exposed to many artists whose work is represented in the collection: Gustave Baumann, Robert Henri, John Sloan, Victor Higgins, and Olive Rush, among them. True exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, in 1931, and one of her paintings was on the cover of El Palacio in 1933. (Addison 2013)

Person TypeIndividual