About
I want my pictures to have a certain timeless, personal but allegorical quality like they do in say ingres [sic] history paintings, but I like the rough edge that photography gives a nude.
—Francesca Woodman
Over a career that spanned less than a decade, Francesca Woodman (1958–1981) created a body of work that has proven uniquely influential on contemporary photography. She explored self-revelation and theatricality, questioning her medium’s capacity to invest representation with narrative and allegorical elements. Frequently taking herself as a subject, Woodman also pictured other models, both female and male. She often worked serially, producing both individual prints and artist’s books. Woodman was drawn to the symbolic aspects of the female nude, the timeless and entropic qualities of dilapidated interiors, and natural settings. She regularly placed mirrors, vitrines, and other objects within her tableaux, positioning them in relation to figures to suggest metamorphosis and paradox.
Born in Boulder, Colorado, to artists George and Betty Woodman, Woodman grew up in Colorado and near Florence, Italy, and attended high school in Massachusetts and Colorado. She made her first mature work, Self-portrait at 13, in 1972, in which she obscures her face while foregrounding the camera’s cable release.
Much of Woodman’s oeuvre dates from her years at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence, which she attended from 1975 to 1978, spending time in 1977–78 in Rome through RISD’s honors program. While in Rome, Woodman had a solo exhibition in 1978 at Libreria Maldoror, a bookstore and gallery she frequented that championed avant-garde art and literature, and she was included in a group exhibition at Galleria Ugo Ferranti the same year.
Photo: George Woodman
#FrancescaWoodman
Website
Fairs, Events & Announcements
In Conversation
On Francesca Woodman
Moyra Davey, Justine Kurland, Drew Sawyer, Collier Schorr
Wednesday, June 28, 2023, 6:45pm
Rizzoli Bookstore, New York
www.rizzolibookstore.com
Join Rizzoli to celebrate Francesca Woodman: The Artist’s Books, published in association with the Woodman Family Foundation. All eight of Woodman’s unique artist’s books are reproduced for the first time in one comprehensive volume, including two that have never before been seen. Artists Moyra Davey, Justine Kurland, and Collier Schorr, together with curator Drew Sawyer, will speak about the influence Woodman’s work has had on their respective practices, and the ways in which an examination of these predominantly unseen books can shed a new light on the late artist’s remarkable work. Published by MACK, the book will be available for purchase at the event.
Francesca Woodman, These people live in that door, Providence, Rhode Island, 1977 © Woodman Family Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
New Representation
Francesca Woodman
Gagosien is pleased to announce its partnership with the Woodman Family Foundation to represent the work of Francesca Woodman (1958–1981). The Foundation, established by the artist’s parents, Betty Woodman (1930–2018) and George Woodman (1932–2017) during their lifetimes, has been active since 2020. Its extensive collection includes lifetime prints and artist’s books as well as Francesca Woodman’s archive of notebooks, journals, correspondence, and related materials, much previously unknown. Gagosien will present photographs by Woodman at Art Basel in June 2023 and is planning an exhibition dedicated to her work in New York in spring 2024.
Francesca Woodman, From Polka Dots, Providence, Rhode Island, 1976 © Woodman Family Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Museum Exhibitions
On View
Francesca Woodman in
The Performative Self-Portrait
Through November 12, 2023
RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island
risdmuseum.org
The Performative Self-Portrait explores the body as material and medium and photography as a vehicle with which to consider the ways that artists use self-portraiture to enact the self, question history, and articulate identity. Made between 1930 and the present, the exhibited photographs include both new acquisitions and older works on view for the first time. Work by Francesca Woodman is included.
Francesca Woodman, Space², Providence, Rhode Island, 1976 © Woodman Family Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Opening Soon
Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron
Portraits to Dream In
March 21–June 30, 2024
National Portrait Gallery, London
www.npg.org.uk
Photographers Francesca Woodman (1958–1981) and Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1879) lived a century apart—Cameron working in the United Kingdom and Sri Lanka from the 1860s onwards, and Woodman in the United States and Italy from the 1970s. Both women explored portraiture, going beyond its ability to record appearance, and using their own creativity and imagination to suggest notions of beauty, symbolism, transformation, and storytelling. Showcasing more than 150 rare vintage prints, this exhibition presents an overview of both artists’ careers, and suggests new ways both to look at their work and to examine how photographic portraiture was created in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island, 1975–78 © Woodman Family Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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Francesca Woodman
Obras de la colección Sammlung Verbund, Viena
March 8–May 7, 2017
Patio Herreriano, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Español, Valladolid, Spain
museoph.org
This exhibition explores work from the Sammlung Verbund, Vienna, by Francesca Woodman (1958–1981). Woodman’s stark, black-and-white photographs explore an intense curiosity and ambivalence toward the feminine self, while her often playful, surreal, and symbolic gestures also demonstrate her ability to incorporate elements of humor into her otherwise sober iconography.
Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island, 1976 © Woodman Family Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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Francesca Woodman
On Being an Angel
September 5–December 6, 2015
Moderna Museet, Stockholm
www.modernamuseet.se
Francesca Woodman (1958–1981) created a body of fascinating photographic works in a few intense years before her premature death. Her work explores gender, representation, sexuality, and the body. This traveling exhibition presents more than a hundred photographs and one video around these themes, including several self-portraits.
Francesca Woodman, On Being an Angel #1, Providence, Rhode Island, 1977 © Woodman Family Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York