Francesca Woodman @ Victoria Miro, Venice - Italian Works

Francesca Woodman: Italian Works

Victoria Miro, Venice

15 September - 15 December 2018

Victoria Miro presents an exhibition of works made in Italy by the celebrated photographer FRANCESCA WOODMANN (1958–1981), including examples from the Eel Series, created in Venice in 1978.

Born and raised in the United States, Francesca Woodman considered Italy her second home. She lived in Florence for a year as a child, attending second grade at a public school there, and spent her adolescent summers in Antella, Tuscany, where her parents purchased a farmhouse when the artist was 11 years-old. Shortly after this, at the age of 13, Francesca Woodman created her first self-portrait, and the genesis of her work until her death in 1981, aged just 22, is intrinsically linked to Italian art and culture.

This exhibition is comprised of Italian images, including those Francesca Woodman made in 1977 and 1978, during the year she spent in Rome at the Rhode Island School of Design’s European Honors programme. This year proved pivotal to her artistic development, and the works from this period emphasise the integral influence of Italian art and culture on her aesthetic vision. One of the key influences of Italian art on Woodman’s work was in her precise use of composition, which became more sophisticated during her time in Rome. She explored perspective and consciously used formal strategies learnt from her study of Florentine masters, particularly Giotto and Piero della Francesca, and classical sculpture.

In addition to immersing herself in the study of historic painting and sculpture in Rome, Woodman made strong connections with Italian artists her own age. She became friends with Giuseppe Gallo and Enrico Luzzi, and through them discovered the Pastificio Cerere, an abandoned pasta factory transformed into an art space that housed the studios of artists who became known as the ‘San Lorenzo Group’. It was in the cavernous spaces of the Cerere that she made some of her most iconic images. She also befriended the young painter Sabina Mirri, who became one of her favourite models.

Also crucial to her development in Rome was Francesca Woodman’s association with the Maldoror bookstore in Via di Parione, which specialised in avant-garde literature of the twentieth century as well as more obscure books on subjects including the fantastical and the grotesque. Woodman spent hours in the shop, learning more about early twentieth-century artistic and literary movements. Her first Italian solo exhibition took place in the bookshop’s basement gallery space.

The exhibition explores Francesca Woodman’s fusion of Italian classicism with aspects of narrative and performance. In Italy Francesca Woodman extended her development of classical subject matter, predominantly the female nude and tropes of still life and classical composition. At the same time she was enhancing and extending her use of narrative and performative strategies. This is evident in her use of series of images, crucially in Self-deceit, 1978, which features scenarios where Francesca Woodman refers to classical and surrealist sculptural poses using her own naked body and a single prop, a rough-edged piece of mirrored glass. Further important series Francesca Woodman worked on during this time include the Angel series, which she commenced in Providence but extended in works made in the Cerere, and Eel Series, 1978, likely created in Venice on one of her frequent visits to the city.

Bringing these diverse works to Venice for the first time reveals the ways in which Italy and its culture underscored the development of an artist whose work has garnered exceptional public and critical interest in the 37 years since her untimely death.

Born in 1958 in Denver, Colorado, FRANCESCA WOODMANN lived and worked in Providence, Rhode Island, New York and Italy until her death in 1981. Significant posthumous solo presentations include On Being an Angel, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2015–2016), touring subsequently to Foam, Amsterdam (2016), Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris (2016), Moderna Museet, Malmo (2016–2017) and Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki (2017); Francesca Woodman, Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco (2011–2012), touring to Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2012); Francesca Woodman: Retrospective, Sala Espacio AV, Murcia, touring to SMS Contemporanea, Siena (both 2009); Francesca Woodman: Providence, Roma, New York, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (2000); Francesca Woodman, Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris, touring to Kunsthal, Rotterdam, The Netherlands (both 1998); Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, Portugal (1999); The Photographers’ Gallery, London (1999); Centro Cultural TeclaSala, L’Hospitalet, Barcelona (1999–2000); Carla Sozzani Gallery, Milan, (2001); The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2001) and PhotoEspana, Centro Cultural Conde Duque, Madrid (2002). Woodman's work is represented in the collections of major museums including The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Whitney Museum of American Art; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Detroit Institute of Arts; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and Tate/National Galleries of Scotland. Current exhibitions include Life in Motion: Egon Schiele / Francesca Woodman, Tate Liverpool, UK until 23 Sep 2018.

VICTORIA MIRO, VENICE

Il Capricorno, San Marco 1994, 30124 Venice

www.victoria-miro.com

Francesca Woodman @ Foam, Amsterdam - On Being an Angel

Francesca Woodman. On Being an Angel

Foam, Amsterdam

18 December 2015 – 9 March 2016

Foam presents an overview of the exceptional and intense work of an American photographer who died young, Francesca Woodman (1958-1981). Woodman used photography as an extremely personal means of expression, as if wearing her skin inside out, making herself the only subject of her work. After her untimely death her photographs were shown in a number of major international exhibitions and they have inspired artists all over the world.

Before committing suicide at the age of twenty-two, Francesca Woodman explored themes such as gender, representation, sexuality and corporality. Her oeuvre consists of a large number of self-portraits. A striking aspect of her work is that she is either explicitly naked, or in contrast, attempts to hide her body: squeezed into a cupboard, behind the wallpaper, wrapped in plastic or material, or in a shroud of movement. She photographs herself in interiors punctuated by evidence of decay. Even when other people feature in Francesca Woodman’s photographs, they function purely as a stand-in for the artist. Francesca Woodman’s photographs showcase a range of symbolist and surrealist influences, and in many cases they evoke oppressive feelings.

Francesca Woodman grew up in a family of artists and began taking photographs in her teens. From 1975 to 1978 she studied at the Rhode Island School of Design. Her oeuvre is usually divided into periods: the early work, her work as a student in Providence, work made in Italy (1977-1978) or at the MacDowell Colony and, finally, the work she produced from 1979 in New York until her death in 1981. She left several hundred gelatine silver prints, although she also experimented with other techniques.

The first major travelling exhibition of Francesca Woodman’s work took place in 1986, some years after her death. Her first European exhibitions were held in the early 1990s. The Kunsthal in Rotterdam was the first to present her work in the Netherlands, in 1998.

The exhibition Francesca Woodman. On Being an Angel has been organized by the Moderna Museet in Stockholm in collaboration with the Estate of Francesca Woodman and consists of 102 photographs, mainly gelatine silver prints but including several large-format diazotype prints and six short videos.

FOAM

Keizersgracht 609, 1017 DS Amsterdam 

www.foam.org