Judith Godwin

Judith Godwin (February 5, 1930 – May 29, 2021) was an American abstract painter, associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement.

Early life and education Judith Godwin was born in Suffolk, Virginia, in 1930 to a father who was interested in architecture and landscape gardening. His interests created an environment that inspired and encouraged Judith to pursue painting. She attended Mary Baldwin College in 1948 for two years. She lived in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, but as a native Virginian, remained a member of the Jamestowne Society. Her papers are held at the Archives of American Art.

Career Godwin's first solo exhibition was in 1950 at Mountcastle's in Suffolk, Virginia. she moved to New York City in 1953 to attend the Art Students League and study under Hans Hofmann, who influenced her work heavily. She studied with Hofmann in his studio on 8th Street, and noted his wife Miz as another important influence. Godwin said that... "I think the main thing with Hofmann was that I felt completely free to do whatever I wanted to do." In the late 1950s, through Kenzo Okada, she met and was invited by Betty Parsons to join her new gallery, Section Eleven, becoming the youngest woman to ever show her work there. She shared a studio with Franz Kline. In a 1981 interview, Godwin stated: "when I first went to New York in the early 1950s, there were just a few thousand painters living there... now there are tens of thousands so many people trying to gain notice, its unbelievable how competitive it is...." She credits her professor, Jewett Campbell, with her desire to move to New York City. Her early influences arose out of her childhood and having assisted her father with gardening. In the 1990s, Godwin began incorporating subtle assemblage to her canvases. Of this later direction she said, "I think it came out of needing to add something to the surfaces of my paintings...I don't want them to jump out."

In a statement made for "Celebration of Women in the Arts," at Northern Michigan University in 1978, Godwin said ..."The act of painting is for me, as a woman, an act of freedom, and a realization that images generated by the female experience can be a powerful and creative expression for all humanity. My paintings are personal statements - extensions of myself. I take a truth, an intimate emotion, a question, an answer – and paint it. It is natural for me to mediate upon reality rather than on the romantic, and yet my work often results in a mixture of both" Metropolitan Museum of Art San Francisco Museum of Modern Art National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Chicago Art Institute Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Utah Museum of Fine Arts Yale University Art Gallery Milwaukee Art Center Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

Exhibitions 1950 Mountcastle's, Suffolk, VA 2004 National Academy of Design's Annual Invitational Exhibition, NY, NY 2010 Spanierman Gallery 2011 Spanierman Gallery 2012 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Anderson Gallery of Virginia Commonwealth University 2013 Group Show, "Ab-Ex/Re-Con", Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn, NY 2016 Group Show, "Women of Abstract Expressionism", Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO. 2016 Group Show, "Women of Abstract Expressionism", Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC 2017 Group Show, "Women of Abstract Expressionism", Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, CA 2017, "Judith Godwin," Berry Campbell, New York 2019, "Judith Godwin: An Act of Freedom," Berry Campbell, New York 2023, Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-1970,Whitechapel Gallery, London.