On November 30, 2010, Spanierman Modern is pleased to announce that it will open Judith Godwin, presenting dynamic abstract canvases by an artist who was at the center of the Abstract Expressionist movement as it unfolded and has steadfastly continued to use its language to bring her direct, and at times raw, emotive experiences to the surface. Her paintings express complex feelings, revealing inner tensions and the struggle between contending forces, often producing a sense of recognition for the viewer, as they stem from candid and searing self-observation. At the same time, they reflect the artist's awareness of the state of the world, both in the aftermath of the devastation of the unleashing of the atomic bomb and the subsequent threats to life on earth. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue (available for $30) with color illustrations of the eighteen works included, an introduction by Ira Spanierman, and essays by Lowery Stokes Sims and David Ebony.
 Judith Godwin's first solo show took place in 1950 in her hometown of Suffolk, Virginia, in which her works, including aggressive line and audacious color, already revealed the influence on her art of Martha Graham, whom Godwin met that year and with whom she developed a lasting friendship. The movement in Graham's dance would remain an essential force in Godwin's art throughout her career. Godwin had developed an assured use of the vocabulary of Abstract Expressionism even before she moved in 1953 to New York. After settling in Greenwich Village she enrolled at the Art Students League, training under Will Barnet, Harry Sternberg, and Vaclav Vytlacil. A formative influence on her art was Hans Hofmann, with whom she studied in Provincetown and New York Stimulated by New York's intellectual environment, Godwin became close to like-minded contemporaries, including Franz Kline, James Brooks, and Kenzo Okada. Nonetheless, she often felt emotionally isolated due to the hyper-macho attitude of the New York art scene at the time. "The men simply said, 'Women can't paint,'" Godwin recalls.
Judith Godwin achieved early success, showing at prestigious New York venues such as the Stable Gallery and Betty Parsons, in whose space she was the youngest woman ever to exhibit. Her large canvases, filled with muscular brushwork and daring color, in which spontaneity vied with structure, revealed a robust physical energy and intellectual rigor that she retained in the years ahead, continuing to develop and expand her visual vocabulary.
 Godwin kept a low profile during the years that Abstract Expressionism fell out of favor, even as her work gained depth and force. Yet as the movement is set into a historical context, with shows such as the current Abstract Expressionist New York at the Museum of Modern Art, the work of Judith Godwin, and others (especially the women whose names have often been omitted from the story of the movement) have come into new appreciation. Godwin has stated that for her as a woman, the act of painting is "an act of freedom, and a realization that images generated by the female experience can be a creative expression for all humanity." The vitality and evolution in Godwin's work-she incorporated collaged elements into her paintings beginning in the 1980s--reflect the way in which she has continued to mine the reaches of abstract form to probe new aesthetic considerations, while creating an art of frankness, emanating from the vicissitudes in her own life.
Godwin has received many awards and honors, including an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond (1989), a career achievement award from Mary Baldwin College, Staunton, Virginia (2002), an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters Degree, also from Mary Baldwin College, and a Professional Achievement Alumni Award from the School of the Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University. Along with numerous group shows, her work has been the subject of many solo exhibitions, including shows at Mary Baldwin College (1978), Womansbank, Richmond, Virginia (1981), Northern Michigan University, Marquette (1984), Lockwood-Matthews Mansion Museum, Norwalk, Connecticut (1985), Northern Virginia Community College, Alexandria (1988), Danville Museum, Virginia and Suffolk Museum, Virginia (1989), Amarillo Museum of Art, Texas (1995), Art Museum of Western Virginia, Roanoke (1997), Albany Museum of Art, Georgia (2000), Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey (2001), Delaware Center for the Arts, Wilmington (2002), Towson University, Maryland (2003), and McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas (2008). Godwin is represented in many important private and public collections, including the A marillo Museum of Art; Anderson Gallery, Virginia Commonwealth University; Art Institute of Chicago; Frances Lehman Loeb Gallery, Vassar College Museum, Poughkeepsie, New York; Gannett Center, Columbia University, New York; General Electric Company, New York; Greenville County Museum, South Carolina; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; JP Morgan Chase Manhattan Collection, New York; Mary Baldwin College; McNay Art Museum; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Milwaukee Art Museum; Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, Massachusetts; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan; National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, South Wales; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; Newark Museum, New Jersey; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Sheldon Art Museum, University of Nebraska, Lincoln; Smith College Museum of Art, Southampton, Massachusetts; Sovran Bank, Richmond, Virginia; Suffolk Museum of Art; Ulrich Museum, Wichita State University, Kansas; United Virginia Bank, Richmond; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; United States Navy Y.M.C.A., Norfolk, Virginia; Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina, Greensboro; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut.
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