Celebrating the Life of Betty Woodman
Betty Woodman
1930-2018
A student once asked Betty if "her art was about her life?" After a moment Betty replied, "my art is my life," and I could add that is is a life which has been lived much in her studio
- George Woodman
We are deeply saddened by the loss of ceramic icon, Betty Woodman, and we are honored to have her work "His/Her Diptych #3" from 1997 in the Blanden Art Museum's Permanent Collection.
"Artist Betty Woodman, a sculptor known for ceramic works that are playful yet rigorous combinations of, among other things, Etruscan sculpture, Egyptian art, Sèvres porcelain, and Henri Matisse, has died.
Woodman was born in Norwalk, Connecticut in 1930. She described her first encounter with clay in a high school art class, according to an interview with Priscilla Frank in the Huffington Post, as “sort of like magic . . . We were given some clay and using our hands we could just make it into a shape. The first thing I ever made was a pitcher. As far as I was concerned that was what I wanted to do. It fell into my hands.” She studied pottery at Alfred University’s School for American Craftsmen, graduating in 1950. In 1952 Woodman traveled to Italy, where traditional forms of earthenware, such as majolica, made a deep impression upon her. Since then, she had spent a portion of every year living there with her husband, the artist George Woodman, who died last March. (The Woodmans are a famous artist family: Their daughter, the late Francesca Woodman, was a photographer; their son, Charles Woodman, who is still living, is an electronic artist. A documentary about the clan, The Woodmans, was released in 2010.)
Betty Woodman has had numerous solo exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe, including “Florentine Interiors” (2017) at Galerie Hubert Winter in Vienna; “Theatre of the Domestic” (2016) at the ICA in London; “Interior Views” (2014) at Galerie Francesca Pia in Zurich; and “Of Botticelli” (2013) at Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi in Berlin. Her last New York solo exhibition was in 2016 at Salon 94—the gallery represents her—and was titled “Breakfast At The Seashore Lunch In Antella.” “The Art of Betty Woodman,” which opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2006, was the artist’s first retrospective in the US." - ARTFORUM
Above are images from her solo exhibition "Between Sculpture and Painting" at the Blanden Art Museum from April 16 - June 20, 1999.
Below are images from Art in the Schools 2015-16 where over 700 students made artwork inspired by Betty Woodman, and were able to see her original work in person during their field trip to the museum.
