Beatrice Wood may not be a household name (yet), but that doesn’t mean her influence and legacy as one of the most unique female artists of the 20th century will go overlooked for much longer. From September 10, 2011 through March 3, 2012 the Santa Monica Museum of Art presents Beatrice Wood: Career Woman—Drawings, Paintings, Vessels, and Objects, a comprehensive survey and new assessment of this seminal artist who made a remarkable body of ceramic lusterware from the 1940s until her death in 1998 at the age of 105. This monographic exhibition offers an authoritative, commemoratory evaluation of Wood’s extraordinary life and career. Featuring over 100 works of art, the exhibition begins with Wood’s early Dada work, which includes drawings, paintings, posters, prints, and illustrated albums and travelogues. The exhibition also features prominent examples of Wood’s ceramics, which are known for their shimmering, outstanding glazes and vessel-like forms.

Born in San Francisco in 1893 to wealthy, aristocratic parents, and then raised in New York, by age 16 Wood felt stifled by the established ways of high society and yearned to run away to Paris. Her mother, desperate to prevent all-out rebellion, finally sent her daughter on a chaperoned trip to France, where Wood studied acting at the Comedie Française and painting at the Academie Julien. Forced to return to New York because of the war, the 19-year old Wood soon found a place among the growing avant-garde artist community. Wood first encountered Dada in New York, through her intimate friendships with Marcel Duchamp, Henri-Pierre Roché and the collectors Walter and Louise Arensberg. It was Dada that first inspired Wood to become an artist, and it shaped her creative thinking for the rest of her life. Wood was exceptionally prolific, even given her remarkable longevity (which she infamously attributed to “chocolate and young men”). She repeatedly investigated and revisited a number of subjects, forms, and materials over a 60- to 70-year period, and her genius can be found in the amalgamation of wide-ranging influences in her work: the spirit of Dadaism, feminism, Modernism, Eastern philosophy, folk art and ethnic jewelry. A fully-illustrated 144-page comprehensive catalog, published by the Santa Monica Museum of Art, accompanies the exhibition and offers a scholarly assessment of Beatrice Wood. This elegant publication includes 58 full-color plates, over 90 photographs, forward and acknowledgements by curators Elsa Longhauser and Lisa Melandri, original texts by Garth Clark, Kathleen Pyne and Jenni Sorkin, Wood's original diaries annotated and edited by Francis M. Naumann and Marie T. Keller, and a chronology by Lida M. Sunderland.