While Italian and classical influences are certainly present in Woodman’s earlier photographs, they achieve a new articulation in works made in New York, culminating in her monumental diazotype collage Blueprint for a Temple, in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and its attendant Caryatids, which are also included in this exhibition. As critic Isabella Pedicini points out: ‘Along with her ongoing work with antique statuary, the recurring framing of the acephalous torso recalls the salient characteristics of an antique sculpture. It frequently comes to us in fragments. In any case, her interest in sculpture is focused in particular on the specimen itself, the fragmentary form which survives...Temple Project (1980), in which we see models as caryatids on the side of a Greek temple, also reveals direct classical influences.’

About the artist

Born in 1958 in Denver, Colorado, Francesca Woodman lived and worked in New York and Italy until her death in 1981. Since 1986, with exhibitions presented at Wellesley College Museum, Wellesley, Massachusetts and Hunter College Art Gallery, New York City and seminal essays written by Rosalind Krauss and Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Woodman’s work has been exhibited widely and has been the subject of extensive critical study in the United States and Europe. Significant recent solo museum exhibitions include On Being An Angel, C/O Berlin Foundation, Berlin, Germany (2020) and Fundación Canal, Madrid, Spain (2019), organised by and first presented at Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2015); Francesca Woodman, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California (2011–2012), touring to Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2012) and Artist Rooms, Tate Modern, London (2007), touring to Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2009); Ferens Art Gallery, Hull, England (2011); Bodelwyddan Castle, Denbighshire, Wales (2014); and Oriel Davies Gallery, Newtown, Wales (2014). Woodman’s photographs are included in major museum collections including Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tate, London; National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh; Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art,Humlebaek, Denmark; and Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

Francesca Woodman: New York Works is presented in collaboration with the Woodman Family Foundation.