Beatrice Wood  (American, 1893-1998) 

Beatrice Wood (American, 1893–1998) was a painter, draughtsman, and sculptor best known for her luster-glazed ceramic works. Born in New York to a well-to-do family, Wood studied acting at the Comédie Française and painting at the Académie Julian. The outbreak of World War I necessitated her return to the United States. She would soon become friends with Marcel Duchamp (French, 1887–1968) and Henri Roche, with whom she founded the prominent Dadaist magazine Blind Man; she was also part of a circle of artists and writers who frequented the home of the Modern Art collectors Louise and Walter Arensberg. After a brief and unhappy marriage, Wood moved to Ojai, CA. It was there that she began to learn about ceramics, eventually opening her own studio and expanding her practice from lusterware, vessels, and tableware to Figurative sculptures executed in a self-consciously naïve style. Wood’s work is represented in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, among many others.