Beatrice Wood Sculptures

Magnificent glazed chalice by world famous artist and ceramicist Beatrice "Beato" Wood. iving 105 years, Beatrice Wood was a noted ceramist and also a sparkling personality in the New York art world in the early 20th century. She was friends with early Dadaists Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Isadora Duncan, Francis Picabia, and, because of these associations, was dubbed the "Mama of Dada". Man Ray spoke of her "demurely raunchy wit and famed naughtiness, your bohemianism . . . and extraordinary sense of personal style. . . and her lustrous, opulent ceramic vessels" ("Art in America" 1/98). She was born into an affluent family and studied at the University of Southern California and with Glen Lukens. At age 18, she went to Paris and became friends and lovers in a menage a trois arrangement with Man Ray and his friend Henri-Pierre Roche. Later, Roche's novel, "Jules et Jim" was based on this relationship. In New York, the three of them founded the magazine "Blind man", one of the earliest manifestoes of the Dada movement. She moved to Los Angeles in 1928 and began ceramics in 1937, opening a studio on Sunset Boulevard where she also worked in collage and drawings. Many of her innovative works were iridescent with special glazes and embraced a wide range of styles from ancient Roman glass that looked like it had been buried for centuries to Japanese tea ware...