Vessel

Betty Woodman
1998

Betty Woodman lived between New York and Antella in Toscana. She began her career as a ceramic maker in 1950 intent on creating beautiful objects designed to enrich everyday life. She explored form in the shape of traditional containers such as vases, bowls and dishes. Her works refer to various cultural sources and periods (including Greece, China, Japan, Italy and the Middle East) absorbed through a combination of study and journeys to places associated with ceramic art traditions.

Woodman’s works are included in a number of prestigious collections around the world. La Vasella (Vessel), 1998 takes the form of an iconographic distortion; deformed from a three-dimensional state to two dimensions in an innovative plastic-pictorial experiment. The spiral symbol seen in the paintwork is echoed in the ceramic matter, perhaps as an allusion to the twisting shoots of a vine.