American Artist Georgia O'Keeffe
20th Century American Woman Artist Painted in Taos, New Mexico
© Meg Nola
Brief biography of the world-famous painter, known for her large floral portraits and boldly spare landscapes painted in the southwestern desert.
Georgia O’Keeffe was born in 1887 in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Even as a girl she knew that she wanted to be an artist and pursued her career with keen determination.
Georgia graduated from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, then attended New York’s Art Students League. Following a brief stint as an illustrator, O’Keeffe began studying the theories of Arthur Wesley Dow of Columbia University. Dow’s ideas stressed principles of shapes and patterns in art rather than the traditional strict focus on realism. Through Dow’s method, Georgia was able to approach art from a wider perspective and was also able to obtain work teaching in Texas. The vast Texas skies and landscape were exhilarating to Georgia, and her aesthetic perceptions continued to expand.
Alfred Stieglitz and New York
O’Keeffe’s letters to her New York-based friend Anita Pollitzer prompted Pollitzer to bring some of O’Keeffe’s drawings to Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz was well known in art circles as a photographer and as the man behind Manhattan’s influential 291 Gallery. Stieglitz was greatly impressed by O’Keeffe’s work and began to correspond with her as well.
O’Keeffe and Stieglitz were soon romantically involved and O’Keeffe moved back to New York. Though 23 years older, Stieglitz charmed O’Keeffe with his intensity, while O’Keeffe’s talent and strong will equally captivated Stieglitz. In 1921, Stieglitz exhibited a series of photographs of O’Keeffe, including several nude portraits. The photos caused quite a stir, particularly since O’Keeffe and Stieglitz did not marry until 1924.
Through the rest of the 1920s, Georgia became part of Stieglitz’s artistic network, a group that included fellow photographers Edward Steichen and Paul Strand, and painters Arthur Dove and Charles Demuth. Georgia painted Manhattan skyscrapers and upstate New York barns, and she also began her flower studies.
As subjects, floral portraits were nothing new, but the manner in which O’Keeffe tackled such familiar themes drew much attention. Georgia’s close-up flowers were large and vivid with color, and critics were quick to note their heavy sexual symbolism. By 1928, several of her calla lily paintings had sold for $25,000, a tremendous sum for the time and a particularly tremendous sum for the work of a female artist.
New Mexico and Clouds
A 1929 trip to the Santa Fe-Taos area of New Mexico reintroduced O’Keeffe to the Southwest she had known before her marriage. She was fascinated by the region’s stark colors, and following a period of intense nervous stress made a subsequent New Mexico visit in 1934. Again lured in by the unique beauty, she found a place known as Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu and decided to buy a house and set up a studio. Following Stieglitz’s death in 1946, O’Keeffe made Abiquiu her permanent home.
The still blue skies, black crosses and sun-blanched animal skulls and bones of O’Keeffe’s New Mexico paintings are as famous as her floral works. In the 1960s, O'Keeffe took many airplane trips to attend retrospectives or receive honorary degrees. Her depictions of clouds glimpsed from the plane window would form the next group of paintings to forge the distinct O’Keeffe style.
Later Years and Legacy
The worst fear of any artist – a degenerative loss of sight – began to trouble O’Keeffe in the 1970s. She was not able to produce oil paintings on her own, though she did continue to work in other media. Noted as one of America’s great living treasures, in 1985 she received the National Medal of Arts. Georgia O’Keeffe died in 1986, and upon her request her ashes were released into the Abiquiu wind to become part of the landscape she had immortalized so well.
O’Keeffe’s work is exhibited throughout the world and one of her brilliant red poppies was depicted on a U.S postage stamp. Her Abiquiu studio is part of Santa Fe’s Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and open to the public for tours.
Sources
- Georgia O’Keeffe – Answers.com
- The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum – Biography
- Georgia O’Keeffe, A Life – Roxana Robinson (Harper & Row, 1989)
