Beatrice Wood (March 3, 1893 – March 12, 1998) grew up in San Francisco and New York. Although raised in an affluent, cosmopolitan environment, she was frequently at odds with her mother. She nevertheless aspired to an artistic life in Paris, studying at the Académie Julian and the Comédie-Française. However, with the outbreak of World War I, she returned to New York. In 1916, she met Marcel Duchamp and Henri-Pierre Roché—an encounter that proved life-altering. Through Duchamp, she entered the New York Dada circle centered at the home of Walter and Louise Arensberg. There, she met figures including Man Ray, Mina Loy, Francis Picabia, Charles Demuth, and the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.
During this period, Wood published the influential little magazine The Blind Man. She also helped organize the grand bohemian ball at Webster Hall in 1917, an event often seen as marking the end of an
era. In the 1920s, she entered a new phase of life and moved to California. There, embracing Jiddu
Krishnamurti’s teachings, Wood settled in Ojai to be near him. She subsequently began a distinguished
ceramics career that spanned more than seventy years. Shortly before her death at 105, she was
cited as a partial inspiration for Kate Winslet’s character in Titanic.
