Betty Woodman (1930–2018) is recognized as one of the most important voices in postwar American art, having synthesized sculpture, painting, and ceramics in a highly original and immediately recognizable formal vocabulary. Her embodied readings of a diversity of ancient and modern art historical traditions, as well as her fearless pursuits of visual pleasure, posited her as a boldly contemporary figure whose work proves revelatory in discussions about gender, modernism, craft, architecture, and domesticity. She began as a precocious studio potter in the 1950s; over the subsequent decades she created a radical new vision of how ceramics could function in a contemporary art context. Beginning in the early 2000s, she took on the legacies of Modernist masters like Matisse and Picasso in increasingly direct fashion, incorporating canvas in multi-media works and rendering interior scenes with the breadth and drama of epic history painting.
Betty Woodman was the subject of a 2006 retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York––the first time the museum dedicated such an exhibition to a living female artist. Other recent solo shows were held at K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong (2018); the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2016); Museo Marino Marini, Florence (2015); Gardiner Museum, Toronto (2011); American Academy in Rome (2010); Palazzo Pitti, Giardino di Boboli, Florence (2009); and Denver Art Museum (2006). Woodman’s work is in numerous public collections worldwide, including those of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Boymans-Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam; Brooklyn Museum; Carnegie-Mellon Institute, Pittsburgh; Denver Art Museum; Detroit Art Institute; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museu Nacional do Azulejo, Lisbon; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and World Ceramic Center, Ichon, Korea. She lived and worked in Boulder, Colorado, Antella, Italy, and New York.
Betty Woodman
The Summer House, 2015
glazed earthenware, epoxy resin, lacquer, acrylic paint, canvas, wood
338 1/2 x 94 1/2 x 12 inches
(859.8 x 240 x 30.5 cm)
Betty Woodman
Aztec Vase and Carpet #8, 2015
glazed earthenware, epoxy resin, lacquer, paint, and canvas
36 1/2 x 54 3/4 x 43 inches
(92.7 x 139.1 x 109.2 cm)
Betty Woodman
The Red Table, 2014
glazed earthenware, epoxy resin, lacquer, acrylic paint, canvas
67 1/2 x 86 1/2 x 14 1/4 inches
(171.5 x 219.7 x 36.2 cm)
Betty Woodman
Vase Upon Vase: Joy, 2011 - 2014
glazed earthenware, epoxy resin, lacquer, acrylic paint, wood
66 x 29 x 17 inches
(167.6 x 73.7 x 43.2 cm)
Betty Woodman
Roman Fresco/Pleasures and Places, 2010
glazed earthenware, epoxy resin, lacquer, paint, canvas, wood
approximate installation dimensions:
18 1/2 x 16 x 12 1/2 ft
(563.9 x 487.7 x 381 cm)
Betty Woodman
Roman Girls, 2008
glazed earthenware, epoxy resin, lacquer, and paint
35 1/2 x 82 x 11 inches
(90.2 x 208.3 x 27.9 cm)
Betty Woodman
Aeolian Pyramid, 2001 - 2006
glazed earthenware, epoxy resin, lacquer, paint
approximate installation dimensions:
150 x 168 x 100 inches
(381 x 426.7 x 254 cm)
Installation view, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Betty Woodman
House of the South, 1996
glazed earthenware, epoxy resin, lacquer, paint
159 x 246 x 9 1/2 inches
(403.9 x 624.8 x 24.1 cm)
Installation view, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Betty Woodman
Striped Napkin Holder, 1983
glazed earthenware
21 x 18 1/2 x 11 inches
(53.3 x 47 x 27.9 cm)
Betty Woodman
Persimmon Pillow Pitcher, c. 1980
glazed earthenware, epoxy resin, lacquer, and paint
17 1/2 x 23 1/4 x 14 3/4 inches
(44.5 x 59.1 x 37.5 cm)
Betty Woodman
Joined Vases, 1972
porcelain
23 x 10 x 11 1/2 inches
(58.4 x 25.4 x 29.2 cm)
Betty Woodman
"Etruscan" Vase, 1966
earthenware
7 1/2 x 8 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches
(19.1 x 21.6 x 19.1 cm)