Backstories

This week is your last chance to see George Woodman: A Democracy of Parts, Paintings 1966-1978, an exhibition tracing the development of Woodman’s singular approach to pattern and color over a series of paintings rarely shown in New York in more than 40 years.

By 1977, George Woodman’s tessellation paintings became non-periodic or aperiodic, consisting of a set of shapes which tiled the canvas but did not necessarily repeat.

By the mid-70s, George Woodman’s singular approach to pattern painting—as harmony between color and form—was well established and recognized among artists and critics alike. Woodman’s canvases were part of the larger zeitgeist around pattern in the art of this period.

Pattern paintings made up of repeating forms can tend towards uniformity or sameness, but not so for George Woodman. Instead, he integrated color into his pattern systems as an equal to form rather than a subordinate, constructing compositions in which color steers and complicates the viewer’s perception.

George Woodman’s tessellated pattern paintings built upon observations made in the three-dimensional realm of architecture, specifically in the tiled surfaces that covered walls and floors as they emerged from and receded into space.

Tessellations are a type of pattern in which one or more geometric shapes are repeated—and often rotated and reflected—to seamlessly cover a surface. In George Woodman’s case, that surface was a canvas.

In her essay for the exhibition’s catalogue—“The Mind as it Measures: George Woodman’s Patterns”—curator Rebecca Skafsgaard Lowery discusses Woodman’s approach to pattern and color in the context of his contemporaries.

In 1965, George Woodman visited Granada, Spain to see the Alhambra, the iconic monument to Islamic architecture where geometry, ornamentation and architecture harmoniously converge in a multitude of tiled and carved surfaces.

From the fall of 1965 through the summer of 1966, George Woodman spent the year living and working near Florence, Italy. It was in this year that the presence of pattern and attention to color that characterized his earlier paintings took a definitive turn.

Focusing on geometric abstractions from a significant period within the artist's six-decade career, this exhibition traces the development of George Woodman's singular approach to pattern.

"Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In" is currently on view in Spain through October 20.

It’s your last chance to see “Portraits to Dream In,” beautifully installed to recall the period from cool, blue dusk to warm, rosy dawn and reflect what curator Magdalene Keaney describes as “the dream space” shared by both Woodman's and Cameron’s photographs.