In December of 1963, George Woodman opened an exhibition of his recent paintings at the Henderson Gallery at University of Colorado, Boulder, where he also taught painting and philosophy of art. These paintings—made in 1962 and 1963—moved away from the loose abstraction he had previously applied to painting the landscape and towards an approach that recalled maps and aerial views. Woodman’s interest in geometry became clear. He first turned a square canvas on an angle, creating a diamond shape. In other works, the landscape began to disappear entirely, giving way to repeating elements and pieces of pattern. Of these paintings, he wrote:

“In recent work I have been interested in establishing compositions based upon pre-selected regular geometric patterns. These are worked through in a manner analogous to ‘row composition’ as practiced by the twelve-tone composers. I have tried to articulate these expressively neutral patterns by tightly controlled and dramatic color relationships. I aspire to painting which is clear in expressive intent, reflective of intelligence and free of extraneous appeal to sentiment, material, or tradition.”

The importance of color and his distinct and engaging use of it did not go unnoticed. In a review of the exhibition in the Boulder Daily Camera, the writer pointed out: “Woodman so well reminds us that painting is a world of color. Even in the most intellectually purified designs, the color lights up the painting in an almost electrifying manner. This strong expressive color which is both lovely and harsh is the emotive foil to the strict geometric format in which it is employed.”