Geta Brătescu

This display brings together the space of the studio and the process of drawing, both of which functioned for Geta Brătescu at the threshold between the inner mental world of the artist and the world outside

Brătescu developed a conceptual artistic practice in Romania during a period of political unrest and censorship following the Second World War. She placed drawing at its core, exploring the process both as a method and as a conceptual device for her works in other mediums, from film and collage to performance and installation. For Brătescu, her sewn works were ‘drawing on textile with a sewing machine’. She imagined the process as bringing to life the mental world of the artist: ‘drawing connects the actual space with the abstract one. Everything we do, we decrypt and encrypt through drawing’. Brătescu worked as a book illustrator in parallel to her own art practice. This fed her interest in mythological characters such as Medea, which reappear in many of her works.

Meanwhile, the artist’s studio, positioned at the threshold of public and private, became an exploratory space for Brătescu in the totalitarian political climate of post-war Romania. ‘The studio is myself’, the artist stated: an arena in which artistic exploration was also a way to experiment with multiple versions of the self. In Hands the space of the studio and the process of drawing come together to form a faceless portrait of the artist. Bratescu saw an intrinsic bond between the two: ‘the place where drawing rejoices in its force and absolute freedom, like the prayer in a church, is THE STUDIO’."

Tate Modern
Natalie Bell Building Level 2 East
Room 3

Getting Here

10 July 2023 – 12 January 2025

Free

Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island 1975–8

In this black and white photograph Francesca Woodman, naked and looking at the camera, appears seated on a cushioned wooden stool low to the ground with her left arm covering her left breast and her toes curling around the edges of a rug. On the rug to her right stands an unidentified naked woman whose head is out of the frame and whose right hand rests on her belly. A mirror propped against the wall behind her reflects the shadowed backs of her legs. Words are scrawled on the wall above the mirror and, above these, two cloths hang from a horizontal beam, one showing several unclear words and an image. Above Woodman a photograph is tacked to the wall, as well as another cloth that hangs lopsided. The left third of the image is dominated by shelves that contain books, papers and bottles of different sizes. Below the shelves an array of papers and various objects sit on the floor.

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Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island 1975–6

This square black and white photograph is attached to an off-white paper mount. Shot from above, the photograph shows the American artist Francesca Woodman crouched on her hands and knees on top of the reflective glass of a rectangular mirror, which lies flat on the floor. The mirror is bordered by a dark carved frame and fills most of the image at an oblique angle to the edges of the picture. Occupying the top left corner of the image and covering nearly half of the mirror’s surface is a small woven rectangular rug. Woodman, who wears a sweater but apparently nothing else, is positioned diagonally across the mirror so that her head is framed by the corner of the rug to the left of the image, while her naked backside arches up towards the top right corner. She leans down low towards the mirror with bent arms but turns her head, which is slightly blurred, to look up at the camera. Below the photograph, on the off-white paper mount, Woodman has written in red ink, ‘See you Sunday Bow Wow love Spot’.

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Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island 1976

This black and white square-format photograph features the artist sitting in a chair in the corner of an abandoned interior space. The room has bare floorboards and a heavy skirting board. On the right of the composition, behind the artist, is a window through which light enters the scene, while on the left is what looks like a filled-in window surround. Woodman is seated on a white wooden chair and is nude except for a necklace and a pair of dark single-strap ‘Mary Jane’ style shoes. She wears her hair up, with a single lock falling on the right side of her face. Looking straight at the camera, she sits upright with her legs almost together and her feet tucked in close to the chair, while her hands are positioned in her lap just between her legs. Her bare breasts and torso are lighter in colour than the rest of her skin. On the a particularly white area of the floor to her right, forming a diagonal from where she sits, is a dark silhouette or impression of what looks like a female body, with its head at the artist’s feet. The outline is only partial, missing its forearms, hands and left leg.

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Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island 1975–8

This square black and white photograph is attached to the top right corner of an off-white paper mount. In the photograph, Francesca Woodman leans sharply to her right beneath a low ceiling. She wears a pale polka-dotted dress and dark shoes, and her right arm comes up to touch the top of her head. She looks in the direction of the camera, but her facial features as well as other parts of her body are blurred. She stands just inside the frontal opening of a small brick structure. Many of the bricks appear to be aged or stained. Around the structure’s exterior are pipes, wiring and other industrial materials. A stack of bricks in the foreground dominates much of the photograph’s left side, and the entire image seems tilted slightly to the left. Below the photograph, on the off-white paper mount, Woodman has written in blue ink: ‘Bunny bun I’m in the photolab come fetch me if the mood or a rock should strike you’.

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Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island 1975–8

In this square black and white photograph Francesca Woodman stands with her back against a wall. Her body is oriented towards the camera, but she bends over so that her head – which, mostly out of frame and seen from the top, is little but a nose – faces the ground. She wears a patterned dress or blouse and skirt and is barefoot, while her arms hang down in front of her, blurred in action. The wall and skirting board behind her are peeling and cracked, and on the floor around her feet are dead leaves, plaster and assorted debris. A slant of light from an unseen source creates a bright diagonal line that passes from Woodman’s right hand across her right knee and left calf, before ending in a patch of light on the floor to her left. From her right hand – and perhaps also from her left hand – hangs a flimsy material, obscured by the blur and the light. The image is captured at an angle so that it tilts down to the left.

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Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island 1975–8

Francesca Woodman stands at the far right edge of this black and white square photograph with her hands resting on her upper thighs so that she is slightly bent over. She wears long, horizontally-striped stockings that cover almost all of her legs. Aside from the stockings, she is naked. Her head and long hair are blurred in movement, and her hair obscures her left breast. To the left of Woodman hang a variety of dresses, one from a hanger on a horizontal beam with nails, and the others from tacks in a large panel on the wall. The wall is otherwise bare except for some cracks and areas of discolouration. Towards the bottom left of the image a wide-framed mirror – cropped half out of the image – sits on the floor against the wall and reflects several objects situated behind the camera.

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Francesca Woodman, Me and Benjamin in May c.1976

This black and white photograph is attached to the centre of an off-white paper mount. Francesca Woodman appears along the right edge of the photograph standing with her back angled towards the camera. She wears a loose-fitting dress, and her hair is in a ponytail. Benjamin Moore, her boyfriend at the time, stands opposite her at a short distance in the middle of the image, also at an oblique angle to the camera. He wears a plain dress shirt tucked into a pair of dark trousers and holds in his left arm a tall, rectangular mirror that rests against his body. The mirror reflects light originating from outside the frame as well as what appears to be part of Woodman’s upper body in its lower right corner. Moore’s head is mostly cropped out of the image and he appears to be holding something long and wiry in his lowered right hand. Woodman and Moore stand in a nondescript room lit from the right so that they cast shadows against the wall behind Moore. Leaves and debris are visible on the floor. Above the photograph, written in ink on the paper mount, are the words: ‘me and Benjamin in May’. Typed below the photograph are the words: ‘photographs by francesca woodman / addison gallery, andover, mass. / october’. Woodman’s name is handwritten in slanted ink letters over her typed name.

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