From the Archives

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 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.

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.

Throughout her career, Betty Woodman embraced the possibilities that different kilns and firing techniques offered, adapting her approach to the materials available in the diverse places where she lived and worked.

In the spring of 1981, Betty Woodman and Cynthia Carlson started planning for “An Interior Exchanged,” an environmental collaboration presented in ARTISANSPACE at the Fashion Institute of Technology in 1982.

Archives Intern Shauna Fitzgerald shares some thoughts on her experience in the WFF Archives in the Fall of 2024.

In 1972, Francesca Woodman received her first camera, a 6x6 twin-lens reflex Yashica Mat-124G, from her father, George Woodman.

October is American Archives Month and we are celebrating by looking at some of the tools of the trade used by George Woodman and Betty Woodman in our collection.

Sixty years ago, before they had traveled much of the world together, the Woodman family visited the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.

Happy 71st anniversary to Betty Woodman and George Woodman, who were married on this day in 1953.