Happy Birthday, Mama of Dada!

To celebrate Beatrice Wood's birthday and learn more about her amazing life, join us today at the Renwick Gallery to view the biographical film, "Beatrice Wood: Mama of Dada."

Born in San Francisco, Beatrice Wood was raised in New York City. At the age of nineteen she abandoned her privileged background and went to Paris, where she studied acting at the Comédie Française and drawing at the Académie Julian. Returning to New York, she acted with a French repertory company from 1914 to 1916. During these years she made friends with members of the Dada group of artists, including Marcel Duchamp.

In 1928 Wood moved to California. Her first exposure to ceramics was an adult-education course at Hollywood High School, which she had taken to learn how to make a teapot to match some luster-glaze plates she had bought in Holland. A deepening interest in ceramics led her to study with renowned potters Otto and Gertrud Natzler.

In 1948 Wood moved to Ojai, California, where she lived the rest of her life and where she began producing the the iridescent luster surfaces that have made her famous. . . . Although Wood did not invent this technique, she imparted to it and the ceramic medium a new expressiveness and theatricality.

The film, "Beatrice Wood: Mama of Dada," was made on the occasion of the artist's 100th birthday. It will be screened continuously from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on March 3 and March 17 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery, located at 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, across from the White House.

Source: Kenneth R. Trapp and Howard Risatti. Skilled Work: American Craft in the Renwick Gallery. (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998).

Pictured: Beatrice Wood (1893–1998) , Vase,about 1978, ceramic: earthenware with lustres, 7 in. diam., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Jane Warren Larson.