Osman Can Yerbekan looks back on 1984 Metropolis Magazine feature on Betty Woodman and George Woodman, linking the early influence of architecture on Betty’s ceramics to her legacy as a radical sculptor.

George Woodman’s landscape paintings from the early 1960s were influenced by modernists from Cézanne to Diebenkorn and profoundly impacted by his year-long stay in Italy. “The landscape in Italy is not the same. Italy is not a natural object. The earth is shaped. The hillsides are terraced…I painted many more Italian landscapes in Boulder than I ever did in Italy."

Betty Woodman in “Shapes from Out of Nowhere: Ceramics from the Robert A. Ellison Jr. Collection” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through August 29, 2021.

Francesca Woodman's love of dessert was well-known to her family and friends, often coming up in letters or conversations, and even in two paintings she made in the late 1970s.

George Woodman and Betty Woodman began their nearly seven decade relationship in life and art in 1950. While Betty was on a year-long solo trip to Fiesole, Italy from 1951-52, the two regularly exchanged passionate love letters and affectionate notes.

Betty Abrahams Woodman was raised with her sister in Newton, Massachusetts by their “liberal, anti-religious and culturally ambitious” parents who fostered in their daughters the importance of responsibility and self-determination. This New Year’s card from the late 40s - early 50s reveals a young Betty with her family.

From his early abstract paintings to more recent painted photographs, color was a powerful and continuous thread in George Woodman’s work. Even as his focus shifted to black and white photography, Woodman never abandoned his interest in color, instead finding ways to create unexpected dialogues between and across media.

LAST CHANCE to see Francesca Woodman in "The Body Electric" at the National Gallery of Australia!

Learn from our Executive Director, Lissa McClure, about ways the Foundation continues to support and steward the legacies of Betty Woodman, Francesca Woodman and George Woodman, while working from home.

Francesca Woodman often used the backs of her photographs to write letters to family and friends, addressing, stamping and dropping her prints directly into the mailbox. In this exchange between her and George from April 1977, they discuss her first forays into fashion photography and other news from Providence and Boulder.

After acquiring a loft in New York City in 1980, Betty and George began to split their time between homes and studios in Manhattan, Boulder, Colorado and Antella, Italy—a way of living that became vital to their work. A 1984 feature on the couple in the magazine Metropolis chronicles their dynamic lives, relationship and art.

LAST CHANCE to see Francesca Woodman: New York Works in Venice this week! On view through Saturday, December 12, 2020 at Victoria Miro Venice.