Beatrice Wood USA, 1893-1998
Carved footed bowl, c. 1950
Signed on underside
Glazed ceramic
8 1/2 x 8 1/2 x 7 in
21.6 x 21.6 x 17.8 cm
21.6 x 21.6 x 17.8 cm
This is an example of Beatrice Wood's early pottery, made in the 1940s or 1950s. With incised markings into the surface of the clay, figures, a fish, a dandelion alongside...
This is an example of Beatrice Wood's early pottery, made in the 1940s or 1950s. With incised markings into the surface of the clay, figures, a fish, a dandelion alongside abstracted markings more suggestive to the imagination play out against the clay, black and white colours of antiquity. As a modernist, the figures lean toward the primitive markings championed by modernist painters such as Paul Klee. Beatrice Wood saw a good deal of work by Paul Klee as the result of the efforts of Galka Sheyer, an art dealer from Europe who brought noted examples of the Blau Reiter group to Los Angeles. Sheyer commissioned a gallery-house in the Hollywood Hills by Richard Neutra.
"When I met Galka Sheyer I wanted to run, for she impressed me as the rudest person I had ever met... The second time we met I saw through her rudeness and perceived a person of enormous tolerance and dignity. She was like a gourd - rough on the outside, but full of rare delicacy within. Galka Sheyer had brought from Germany the paintings of Paul Klee, Vassily Kandinsky, Alexej Jawlensky, and Lyonel Feininger. They were unknown at the time in Amerca, but well known in Europe as "The Blue Four."... Sheyer bought a lot on top of the Outpost - a hill overlooking Hollywood - for two hundred dollars. It was reached only by a tortuously steep and winding road which Galka drove up at high speed. It terrified me.
Once there, if one could forget the ordeal of the trip, it was paradise. She had asked Richard Neutra to design the house, which was actually one very large sitting room gallery used to display the Big Four paintings. There was little furniture. To one side there was an anteroom to store paintings and to the other a small bedroom opening on to a garden. She had extraordinary taste. On the hills she discovered weeds and arranged them with decorative skill in empty pickle jars which sat on the floor. She opened the door to art to many, showing us a creative way of living. I visited there often and came to appreciate Klee, as well as American primitve and folk art." - I Shock Myself, Beatrice Wood, 1985 (2018 edition), pp.117-118
"When I met Galka Sheyer I wanted to run, for she impressed me as the rudest person I had ever met... The second time we met I saw through her rudeness and perceived a person of enormous tolerance and dignity. She was like a gourd - rough on the outside, but full of rare delicacy within. Galka Sheyer had brought from Germany the paintings of Paul Klee, Vassily Kandinsky, Alexej Jawlensky, and Lyonel Feininger. They were unknown at the time in Amerca, but well known in Europe as "The Blue Four."... Sheyer bought a lot on top of the Outpost - a hill overlooking Hollywood - for two hundred dollars. It was reached only by a tortuously steep and winding road which Galka drove up at high speed. It terrified me.
Once there, if one could forget the ordeal of the trip, it was paradise. She had asked Richard Neutra to design the house, which was actually one very large sitting room gallery used to display the Big Four paintings. There was little furniture. To one side there was an anteroom to store paintings and to the other a small bedroom opening on to a garden. She had extraordinary taste. On the hills she discovered weeds and arranged them with decorative skill in empty pickle jars which sat on the floor. She opened the door to art to many, showing us a creative way of living. I visited there often and came to appreciate Klee, as well as American primitve and folk art." - I Shock Myself, Beatrice Wood, 1985 (2018 edition), pp.117-118