Lot 5: BEULAH WOODARD (1895 - 1955) Maudelle.

BEULAH WOODARD (1895 - 1955)
Maudelle.

Fired terra-cotta painted brown, with white and green additions, circa 1937-38. Approximately 305x310x202 mm; 12x12 1/4x8 inches. Indistinctly incised initials "BW" lower edge verso.

Illustrated in Selected Pieces from the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Co. Afro-American Art Collection.

This bust displays Woodard's powerful realism in the careful modelling of the subject's features and in the detailed description of her hair and earrings. Woodard made a similar African woman in terracotta with the same treatment of color on the earrings, and another version of Maudelle in fired clay. Throughout her career, Woodard faithfully recorded African styles of dress and decoration from her own research. Farrington pp. 94-94, ills. 4.16 and 4.18.

Maudelle Bass Weston (1908 – 1989) was an African-American dancer and artists' model known professionally as Maudelle. She went on to pose for such painters as Diego Rivera, Abraham Baylinson, Nicolai Fechin, and Robert M. Jackson and photographers Johan Hagemeyer, Sonia Noskowiak, Edward Weston, Weegee, Carl Van Vechten, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, and Lola Alvarez Bravo. She moved to Los Angeles in 1933; she became a sculptor herself in 1976.