Last week was an exciting one at the Woodman Family Foundation. Upon their long-awaited return to New York, we were treated to a room full of George Woodman’s paintings. And wow we were bowled over by how fresh and contemporary these paintings feel, despite the fact that they were made some 50 years ago. We were struck by the subtle and shifting interplay of color and pattern and the raw intelligence of George's approach, which are slowly revealed over the course of a lingering look. What a pleasure to see these ambitious and original works in person.

Here our preparator Ryan Brady and his assistants unpack “Untitled,” 1970, at 11 feet long among the largest of George's paintings from this period concerned with a particular rotating shape based on a hexagon. Of this group of works, George wrote:

"I contemplated the properties of hexagons. Five triangles can be combined to create an elbow shape and two mirror images of these shapes make an arrow form. These can be arranged on a field of hexagons so as to completely cover it without overlapping, thus creating what, in mathematics, is called a 'tessellation.' For two and a half years my work was based on this arrow form, trying variations in size, number of repetitions, and its reading as three-dimensional, all with different color harmonies and qualities of surface.”

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Click on the image above for a complete gallery view and details.