GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Born in 1887 near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Georgia O’Keeffe began drawing lessons at ten. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1905 to 1906 and the Art Students League in New York with William Merritt Chase from 1907 to 1908. Disillusioned with academic art, she gave up painting in 1908 and went to Chicago where she worked as a commercial artist.
After a few years in Chicago working as a commercial artist O'Keeffe returned to her family's home in Virginia. In the summer of 1912 at her sisters’ urging, she visited a drawing class at the University of Virginia taught by Alon Bement. His instruction, based on theories of design inspired by Columbia Teachers' College professor Arthur Dow, greatly influenced O'Keeffe's thinking. The tone of the art world, set by such champions of the American school as O’Keeffe’s former instructor William Merritt Chase, was conservative. Before the revolutionary Armory Show in 1913, when European avant-garde artists such as Henri Matisse, Paul Cezanne, and Pablo Picasso were introduced to the American public, Alfred Stieglitzs "291" Gallery was the only outlet where work by such innovative artists could be seen. O'Keeffe visited "291" and was initially put off by Stieglitz's abrasive, argumentative personal style. But she was, at the same time, fascinated by his enthusiasm for the role of new arts for the new century.
From the fall of 1912 through the spring of 1914, O'Keeffe supported herself by teaching art in Amarillo, Texas. She immediately felt at home in the prairie, despite the difference between the great empty spaces of Texas and the familiar green rolling hills of Virginia where she continued to spend her summers. O'Keeffe returned to New York from the fall of 1914 through the spring of 1915 and again in the spring of 1916 for a few months of study at Columbia Teachers' College. A more serious student than on previous visits, she began making critical decisions about her future as an artist. New European and American artists, as well as collectors and critics, continued to meet in Stieglitz's "291" Gallery.
While in South Carolina teaching at a small college in 1915 and 1916, O'Keeffe created a series of highly original black and white charcoal drawings. She sent the drawings to Anita Pollitzer, a friend and fellow student from New York, who showed them to Alfred Stieglitz. Organic, natural forms define these abstract drawings that visually incorporate O'Keeffe's idea of drawing based on the elements of design.
Returning to Texas in the fall of 1916 provided O'Keeffe with the inspiration to produce highly expressive images. She re-introduced brilliant color into her work, using it freely as a tool of expression, just as she had before used only line, form, and composition. She also began to utilize a technique that she would use throughout her life: the repetition of one idea in a series of pictures dealing with the same subject.
Stieglitz and O'Keeffe corresponded regularly from 1916 to 1918. The drawings that the artist sent to Stieglitz from Canyon, Texas, formed the nucleus of her first one-woman show held at "291" during the spring of 1917. She traveled to New York to see the exhibition, which had been taken down and had to be rehung. When the paintings and drawings were re-installed, Stieglitz took his first photographs of O'Keeffe, beginning a study that would last until 1937. O'Keeffe returned to New York in 1918, and the two were married in 1924.
By the 1920s, O'Keeffe had rebelled against her training at the Art Students League and had developed a highly personal vocabulary of forms derived from nature. She filled up entire canvases with close up images of plants and flowers. During her career, which spanned nearly seventy years, O'Keeffe's art continually fluctuated between the real and abstract. She presented identifiable subjects, whether a flower, a bone, or a rock and explored the idea of that object until she had exhausted her interest in the image.
Stieglitz supported her work with yearly solo exhibitions, first at the Intimate Gallery and subsequently at An American Place after "291" closed. In 1929, O'Keeffe began spending summers in New Mexico. There she continued to use her surroundings as her most frequent subject, creating innovative renderings of the magnificent beauty and mystery of the desert landscape. By picking up pieces of the desert, bones, and rocks and by isolating and magnifying them, she painted the essence of the land she loved. After Stieglitz's death in 1946, O'Keeffe returned to New Mexico to live permanently, but she traveled frequently and gained inspiration from new sites and experiences.
Adapted from
- Steven A. Nash, Dallas Collects American Paintings: Colonial to Early Modern (exhibition catalogue, Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, 1982), 136-139.
- "Georgia O'Keeffe: A Brief Biography," DMA Bulletin Spring/Summer 1988, pp 27-29.
NOTES
Passage about Dead Tree, 1930
fn the 19th century Albert Bierstadt painted in an elongated format the giant trees of California, some of them bereft of foliage. It is that same towering, skeletal effect that O'Keeffe has recorded in more abstract terms in this painting of a dead tree seen at Bear Lake near Taos. The upwardly spiralling grey trunk of the tree is set against a brown and green backdrop of other trees, establishing a counterpoint of hard versus soft, death versus life. The tree is a ghostly silent witness in an otherwise lush setting, while in strictly formal terms it functions as a long, sleek, upwardly thrusting division of the vertical dark space not unlike some of the dynamic divisions of darkness that Clyfford Still would later invent. Just one year earlier O'Keeffe had painted the spreading limbs of The Lawrence Tree seen against a starry night sky, but now it is a different structural and emotional quality that captures her attention. The tactile nature of the smooth, gnarled, weathered trunk, the depth of the grey color, and the sense of something aged and tough are stressed here as also in numerous later works dealing with similar motifs.
Passage abotu Red Hills and Sky, 1945
Georgia Q'Keeffe first visited New Mexico in 1917 and returned in 1929 for a summer with Mabel Dodge Luhan in Taos; thereafter, she spent moSt of her summers in New Mexico until she finally bought a house in Abiquiu in 1940. As early as 1929-30 the red hills of the starkly beautiful New Mexican landscape entered her art as a favorite mOtif. Their weathered, undulating comours have a sculptural quality similar to the bones, shells, and weathered (fCC trunks that appeal to the artist so strongly on sensual grounds. The contrast of their striking color against the clear blue New Mexican sky also has an impact that reinforces the power of O'Keeffe's
generally simplified, terse compositions. As with many of her subjects, there is a sense in these simplified natural forms of expansive meanings, of one set of forms evoking others through metaphor and suggestion as pan of an anistic examination of natural universals. In thiS case the metaphor of a human txxfy segment is strong and is even suggested in a statement the artist made on the painting:
"A liute way out beyond my kitchen window at the Ranch is a V shape in the red hills. I passed the V many times - sometimes SlOpping lO look as it spoke [Q me qUietly. lone day carried my canvas out and made a draWing of it. The shapes of the drawing were so simple that it scarcely seemed worth while to bother with it any further. But J did a painting - JUSt the arms of two red hills reaching out lO the sky and holding it." (Lener of August 3, 1967, [Q owner of the painting; quoted in Georgia 0 'Keeffe, 1976, op. cit.)
Gail Davitt, biographical essays, education files, 1986-1987.
Georgia 0 'Keeffe received her early schooling in Wiconsin and then studied at the Chicago Art Institute and the Art Students League in New York. In 1918 she joined the rtistic group sponsored by Alfred Stieglitz at his 291 Gallery. She and Stieglitz eventually wed. By the 1920s, O'Keeffe had rebelled against her training at the Art Students League and had developed a highly personal vocabulary of forms derived from nature. She filled up entire canvases with close up images of plants and flowers. In so doing, she created a world in which natural forms are adapted to express a lyric vision. At one time O'Keeffe had taught school in west Texas; in the late 1920s, she moved to New Mexico, where she found her subject in the landscapes and simple architectural forms of the Southwest. These became her subject for the rest of her life.
biography from Dallas Collects American paintings 136, 139.
One of the major forces of modernism in early 20th century American art, O'Keeffe has worked in both fully abstract and semi-abstract styles that translate her perceptions of and reactions to nature with both sensuosity and formal clarity. Developing outside any particular stylistic camp, she has contributed her own, highly original brand of American art. Born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, she began drawing lessons at ten, then studied at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1905 to 1906 and the Art Students League in New York with W. M. Chase from 1907 to 1908. Disillusioned with academic art, she gave up painting in 1908 and went to Chicago where she worked as a commercial artist. Her visit in 1912 to an art class at the University of Virginia rekindled her interest in painting and s!"te subsequently studied under Arthur Dow at Columbia University, 1914-15. A friend showed some draWings to Alfred Stieglitz who exhibited them at "291" in 1916; the close supportive relationship that afterwards developed between Stieglitz and O'Keeffe led to their marriage in 1924. She had a one-artist show at "291 ,. in 1917 and made her first trip to New Mexico the same year. From 1918 to 1928 she lived and worked in New York with frequent trips to Lake George and Maine. Her simplified and yet romantic interpretations of nature emerging in this period shared certain principles with work by other members of the Stieglitz circle also exploring flatly patterned nature abstractions. From 1929 O'Keeffe spent summers around Taos, and in 1949 after the death of Stieglitz she moved to Abiquiu, New Mexico, where she still lives.
"Georgia O'Keeffe: A Brief Biography," DMA Bulletin Spring/Summer 1988, pp 27-29. No author listed.
12054435: UMO
Born in 1887 on a farm in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Georgia O'Keeffe began a direct, observant relationship with her immediate environment
during her childhood. Perhaps as a result of her early years on a farm, she gained insight into the cycles of nature which would have an
impact upon her life and would serve as one source for her work as an artist.
O'Keeffe attended boarding school in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains when her family moved to Virginia in 1903. She walked
for long hours in the mountains , observing the landscape, and recording her observations in her work.
After spending a year at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, O'Keeffe went to New York City for the first time in the fall of 1907 as a
student at the Art Students' League. The tone of the art world, set by such champions of the American school as William Merritt Chase, was conservative. Before the revolutionary Armory Show in 1913, when European avant garde artists such as Henri Matisse, Paul Cezanne, and Pablo Picasso were introduced to the American public, Alfred Stieglitzs "291" Gallery was the only outlet where work by such innovative artists could be seen. O'Keeffe visited "291" and was initially put off by Stieglitzs abrasive , argumentative
personal style. But she was, at the same time , fascinated by his enthusiasm for the role of new arts for the new century.
After another year in Chicago, working as a commercial artist, O'Keeffe returned to her family's home in Virginia. In the summer of
1912 at her sisters urging, she visited a drawing class at the University of Virginia taught by Alon Bement. His instruction, based on theories of design inspired by Columbia Teachers' College professor Arthur Dow, greatly influenced O'Keeffe's thinking. Thus, Dow's notions of filling a space in a beautiful way would become an element in her work. During the following four summers O'Keeffe worked with Bement as a teaching assistant at the University.
From the fall of 1912 through the spring of 1914 O'Keeffe supported herself by teaching art in Amarillo, Texas. She immediately felt at
home in the prairie , despite the difference between the great empty spaces of Texas and the familiar green rolling hills of Virginia where
she continued to spend her summers. She identified with the flat, barren landscape which became a frequent inspiration for her drawings
and paintings.
O'Keeffe returned to New York from the fall of 1914 through the spring of 191 5 and again in the spring of 1916 for a few month s of study at Columbia Teachers' College. A more serious student than on previous visits, she began making critical decisions about her future as an artist. The art world, affected by the Armory Show, was more sophisticated in 1915 than in 1907, the year of her first visit. New European
and American artists, as well as collectors and critics, continued to meet in Stieglitz's "291" Gallery. O'Keeffe made giant steps toward becoming an artist by developing a more original approach to art.
While in South Carolina teaching at a small college in 1915 and 1916, O'Keeffe decided to reject the influence of other artists and to paint
and draw to please only herself. This resulted in a series of highly original black and white charcoal drawings. She sent the drawings to
Anita Pollitzer, a friend and fellow student from New York, who showed them to Alfred Stieglitz. Organic, natural forms define these abstract drawings which visually incorporate O'Keeffe's idea of drawing based on the elements of design.
Returning to Texas in the fall of 1916 provided O'Keeffe with the inspiration to produce highly expressive images. She re-introduced
brilliant color into her work, using it freely as a tool of expression, just as she had before used only line, form and composition. She also began to utilize a technique which she would follow throughout her life: the repetition of one idea in a series of pictures dealing
with the same subject.
Stieglitz and O'Keeffe corresponded regularly from 1916 to 1918. The drawings which the artist sent to Stieglitz from Canyon, Texas,
formed the nucleus of her first one-woman show held at "291" during the spring of 1917. She traveled to New York to see the exhibition,
which had bee' n taken down and had to be rehung. When the paintings and drawings were re-installed, Stieglitz took his first photographs of O'Keeffe, beginning a study that would last until 1937. At Stieglitz's urging, O'Keeffe returned to New York in 1918, and the two were married in 1924.
During her career,which spanned nearly 70 years, O'Keeffe's art continually fluctuated between the real and abstract. She presented
identifiable subjects, whether a flower, a bone or a rock, and explored the idea of that object until she had exhausted her interest in the
image.
Stieglitz supported her work with yearly solo exhibitions, first at the Intimate Gallery, and subsequently at An American Place after "291"
closed. In 1929, tiring of annual sojourns to Lake George with the large Stieglitz family and of the routine of her life, O'Keeffe began
spending summers in New Mexico. There she continued to use her surroundings as her most frequent subject, creating innovative renderings of the magnificent beauty and mystery of the desert landscape. By picking up pieces of the desert, bones and rocks, and by isolating and magnifying them, she painted the essence of the land she loved.
After Stieglitz's death in 1946, O'Keeffe returned to New Mexico to live permanently, but she traveled frequently and gained inspiration
from new sites and experiences.
Throughout her life Georgia O'Keeffe maintained an unusually close visual relationship to the world around her. By realistic rendering or
by capturing the essence of the land by removing one element which becomes a symbol of the subject, O'Keeffe remains today, as we celebrate the centennial of her birth , one of Americas most independent and innovative artists.
Review source:
Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. An Exhibition of Paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe, Pamphlet, 1953; (http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth183370/ : accessed March 04, 2015), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, http://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas , Texas. ON PICTION-- Catalog from the exhibition 'Georgia O'Keeffe: Paintings,' February 1-22, 1953, at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts in Dallas, Texas. Includes: list of artworks, selected images, brief biography.
ASSOCIATED CONTENT CHUNKS
AUDIO ASSETS
VIDEO ASSETS
IMAGE ASSETS
265932228: UMO. [Caption] Portrait photograph of Georgia O'Keeffe by Alfred Stieglitz in 1918. Source: Alfred Stieglitz, Wikimedia Commons, accessed July 18, 2016.
WEB RESOURCES
- The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, NM~Learn more about the artist's life and work.
- Brooklyn Museum~Learn about Georgia O'Keeffe through a combination of paintings, photographs, and fashion at the Brooklyn Museum.
- YouTube~Watch this video about Georgia O'Keeffe from the Tate Modern, London.
- The Art Assignment (PBS)~Watch a 2017 video produced by PBS exploring the recipes of artist Georgia O'Keeffe.
ARCHIVAL RESOURCES
FUN FACTS
- Georgia O'Keeffe was the first woman to have a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
- O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, whom she married in 1924, exchanged over 5,000 letters from their meeting in 1916 until his death in 1946.
TEACHING IDEAS
RULES
set operator as OR
apply to objects where constituent_id equals 556
apply to constituents where id equals 556
Category
rules_operator
OR
General Description
Born in 1887 near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Georgia O’Keeffe began drawing lessons at ten. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1905 to 1906 and the Art Students League in New York with William Merritt Chase from 1907 to 1908. Disillusioned with academic art, she gave up painting in 1908 and went to Chicago where she worked as a commercial artist.
After a few years in Chicago working as a commercial artist O'Keeffe returned to her family's home in Virginia. In the summer of 1912 at her sisters’ urging, she visited a drawing class at the University of Virginia taught by Alon Bement. His instruction, based on theories of design inspired by Columbia Teachers' College professor Arthur Dow, greatly influenced O'Keeffe's thinking. The tone of the art world, set by such champions of the American school as O’Keeffe’s former instructor William Merritt Chase, was conservative. Before the revolutionary Armory Show in 1913, when European avant-garde artists such as Henri Matisse, Paul Cezanne, and Pablo Picasso were introduced to the American public, Alfred Stieglitzs "291" Gallery was the only outlet where work by such innovative artists could be seen. O'Keeffe visited "291" and was initially put off by Stieglitz's abrasive, argumentative personal style. But she was, at the same time, fascinated by his enthusiasm for the role of new arts for the new century.
From the fall of 1912 through the spring of 1914, O'Keeffe supported herself by teaching art in Amarillo, Texas. She immediately felt at home in the prairie, despite the difference between the great empty spaces of Texas and the familiar green rolling hills of Virginia where she continued to spend her summers. O'Keeffe returned to New York from the fall of 1914 through the spring of 1915 and again in the spring of 1916 for a few months of study at Columbia Teachers' College. A more serious student than on previous visits, she began making critical decisions about her future as an artist. New European and American artists, as well as collectors and critics, continued to meet in Stieglitz's "291" Gallery.
While in South Carolina teaching at a small college in 1915 and 1916, O'Keeffe created a series of highly original black and white charcoal drawings. She sent the drawings to Anita Pollitzer, a friend and fellow student from New York, who showed them to Alfred Stieglitz. Organic, natural forms define these abstract drawings that visually incorporate O'Keeffe's idea of drawing based on the elements of design.
Returning to Texas in the fall of 1916 provided O'Keeffe with the inspiration to produce highly expressive images. She re-introduced brilliant color into her work, using it freely as a tool of expression, just as she had before used only line, form, and composition. She also began to utilize a technique that she would use throughout her life: the repetition of one idea in a series of pictures dealing with the same subject.
Stieglitz and O'Keeffe corresponded regularly from 1916 to 1918. The drawings that the artist sent to Stieglitz from Canyon, Texas, formed the nucleus of her first one-woman show held at "291" during the spring of 1917. She traveled to New York to see the exhibition, which had been taken down and had to be rehung. When the paintings and drawings were re-installed, Stieglitz took his first photographs of O'Keeffe, beginning a study that would last until 1937. O'Keeffe returned to New York in 1918, and the two were married in 1924.
By the 1920s, O'Keeffe had rebelled against her training at the Art Students League and had developed a highly personal vocabulary of forms derived from nature. She filled up entire canvases with close up images of plants and flowers. During her career, which spanned nearly seventy years, O'Keeffe's art continually fluctuated between the real and abstract. She presented identifiable subjects, whether a flower, a bone, or a rock and explored the idea of that object until she had exhausted her interest in the image.
Stieglitz supported her work with yearly solo exhibitions, first at the Intimate Gallery and subsequently at An American Place after "291" closed. In 1929, O'Keeffe began spending summers in New Mexico. There she continued to use her surroundings as her most frequent subject, creating innovative renderings of the magnificent beauty and mystery of the desert landscape. By picking up pieces of the desert, bones, and rocks and by isolating and magnifying them, she painted the essence of the land she loved. After Stieglitz's death in 1946, O'Keeffe returned to New Mexico to live permanently, but she traveled frequently and gained inspiration from new sites and experiences.
Adapted from
- Steven A. Nash, Dallas Collects American Paintings: Colonial to Early Modern (exhibition catalogue, Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, 1982), 136-139.
- "Georgia O'Keeffe: A Brief Biography," DMA Bulletin Spring/Summer 1988, pp 27-29.
Fun Facts
- Georgia O'Keeffe was the first woman to have a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
- O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, whom she married in 1924, exchanged over 5,000 letters from their meeting in 1916 until his death in 1946.
Archival Resources
Web Resources
- The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, NM~Learn more about the artist's life and work.
- Brooklyn Museum~Learn about Georgia O'Keeffe through a combination of paintings, photographs, and fashion at the Brooklyn Museum.
- YouTube~Watch this video about Georgia O'Keeffe from the Tate Modern, London.
- The Art Assignment (PBS)~Watch a 2017 video produced by PBS exploring the recipes of artist Georgia O'Keeffe.
Notes
Passage about Dead Tree, 1930
fn the 19th century Albert Bierstadt painted in an elongated format the giant trees of California, some of them bereft of foliage. It is that same towering, skeletal effect that O'Keeffe has recorded in more abstract terms in this painting of a dead tree seen at Bear Lake near Taos. The upwardly spiralling grey trunk of the tree is set against a brown and green backdrop of other trees, establishing a counterpoint of hard versus soft, death versus life. The tree is a ghostly silent witness in an otherwise lush setting, while in strictly formal terms it functions as a long, sleek, upwardly thrusting division of the vertical dark space not unlike some of the dynamic divisions of darkness that Clyfford Still would later invent. Just one year earlier O'Keeffe had painted the spreading limbs of The Lawrence Tree seen against a starry night sky, but now it is a different structural and emotional quality that captures her attention. The tactile nature of the smooth, gnarled, weathered trunk, the depth of the grey color, and the sense of something aged and tough are stressed here as also in numerous later works dealing with similar motifs.
Passage abotu Red Hills and Sky, 1945
Georgia Q'Keeffe first visited New Mexico in 1917 and returned in 1929 for a summer with Mabel Dodge Luhan in Taos; thereafter, she spent moSt of her summers in New Mexico until she finally bought a house in Abiquiu in 1940. As early as 1929-30 the red hills of the starkly beautiful New Mexican landscape entered her art as a favorite mOtif. Their weathered, undulating comours have a sculptural quality similar to the bones, shells, and weathered (fCC trunks that appeal to the artist so strongly on sensual grounds. The contrast of their striking color against the clear blue New Mexican sky also has an impact that reinforces the power of O'Keeffe's
generally simplified, terse compositions. As with many of her subjects, there is a sense in these simplified natural forms of expansive meanings, of one set of forms evoking others through metaphor and suggestion as pan of an anistic examination of natural universals. In thiS case the metaphor of a human txxfy segment is strong and is even suggested in a statement the artist made on the painting:
"A liute way out beyond my kitchen window at the Ranch is a V shape in the red hills. I passed the V many times - sometimes SlOpping lO look as it spoke [Q me qUietly. lone day carried my canvas out and made a draWing of it. The shapes of the drawing were so simple that it scarcely seemed worth while to bother with it any further. But J did a painting - JUSt the arms of two red hills reaching out lO the sky and holding it." (Lener of August 3, 1967, [Q owner of the painting; quoted in Georgia 0 'Keeffe, 1976, op. cit.)
Gail Davitt, biographical essays, education files, 1986-1987.
Georgia 0 'Keeffe received her early schooling in Wiconsin and then studied at the Chicago Art Institute and the Art Students League in New York. In 1918 she joined the rtistic group sponsored by Alfred Stieglitz at his 291 Gallery. She and Stieglitz eventually wed. By the 1920s, O'Keeffe had rebelled against her training at the Art Students League and had developed a highly personal vocabulary of forms derived from nature. She filled up entire canvases with close up images of plants and flowers. In so doing, she created a world in which natural forms are adapted to express a lyric vision. At one time O'Keeffe had taught school in west Texas; in the late 1920s, she moved to New Mexico, where she found her subject in the landscapes and simple architectural forms of the Southwest. These became her subject for the rest of her life.
biography from Dallas Collects American paintings 136, 139.
One of the major forces of modernism in early 20th century American art, O'Keeffe has worked in both fully abstract and semi-abstract styles that translate her perceptions of and reactions to nature with both sensuosity and formal clarity. Developing outside any particular stylistic camp, she has contributed her own, highly original brand of American art. Born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, she began drawing lessons at ten, then studied at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1905 to 1906 and the Art Students League in New York with W. M. Chase from 1907 to 1908. Disillusioned with academic art, she gave up painting in 1908 and went to Chicago where she worked as a commercial artist. Her visit in 1912 to an art class at the University of Virginia rekindled her interest in painting and s!"te subsequently studied under Arthur Dow at Columbia University, 1914-15. A friend showed some draWings to Alfred Stieglitz who exhibited them at "291" in 1916; the close supportive relationship that afterwards developed between Stieglitz and O'Keeffe led to their marriage in 1924. She had a one-artist show at "291 ,. in 1917 and made her first trip to New Mexico the same year. From 1918 to 1928 she lived and worked in New York with frequent trips to Lake George and Maine. Her simplified and yet romantic interpretations of nature emerging in this period shared certain principles with work by other members of the Stieglitz circle also exploring flatly patterned nature abstractions. From 1929 O'Keeffe spent summers around Taos, and in 1949 after the death of Stieglitz she moved to Abiquiu, New Mexico, where she still lives.
"Georgia O'Keeffe: A Brief Biography," DMA Bulletin Spring/Summer 1988, pp 27-29. No author listed.
12054435: UMO
Born in 1887 on a farm in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Georgia O'Keeffe began a direct, observant relationship with her immediate environment
during her childhood. Perhaps as a result of her early years on a farm, she gained insight into the cycles of nature which would have an
impact upon her life and would serve as one source for her work as an artist.
O'Keeffe attended boarding school in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains when her family moved to Virginia in 1903. She walked
for long hours in the mountains , observing the landscape, and recording her observations in her work.
After spending a year at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, O'Keeffe went to New York City for the first time in the fall of 1907 as a
student at the Art Students' League. The tone of the art world, set by such champions of the American school as William Merritt Chase, was conservative. Before the revolutionary Armory Show in 1913, when European avant garde artists such as Henri Matisse, Paul Cezanne, and Pablo Picasso were introduced to the American public, Alfred Stieglitzs "291" Gallery was the only outlet where work by such innovative artists could be seen. O'Keeffe visited "291" and was initially put off by Stieglitzs abrasive , argumentative
personal style. But she was, at the same time , fascinated by his enthusiasm for the role of new arts for the new century.
After another year in Chicago, working as a commercial artist, O'Keeffe returned to her family's home in Virginia. In the summer of
1912 at her sisters urging, she visited a drawing class at the University of Virginia taught by Alon Bement. His instruction, based on theories of design inspired by Columbia Teachers' College professor Arthur Dow, greatly influenced O'Keeffe's thinking. Thus, Dow's notions of filling a space in a beautiful way would become an element in her work. During the following four summers O'Keeffe worked with Bement as a teaching assistant at the University.
From the fall of 1912 through the spring of 1914 O'Keeffe supported herself by teaching art in Amarillo, Texas. She immediately felt at
home in the prairie , despite the difference between the great empty spaces of Texas and the familiar green rolling hills of Virginia where
she continued to spend her summers. She identified with the flat, barren landscape which became a frequent inspiration for her drawings
and paintings.
O'Keeffe returned to New York from the fall of 1914 through the spring of 191 5 and again in the spring of 1916 for a few month s of study at Columbia Teachers' College. A more serious student than on previous visits, she began making critical decisions about her future as an artist. The art world, affected by the Armory Show, was more sophisticated in 1915 than in 1907, the year of her first visit. New European
and American artists, as well as collectors and critics, continued to meet in Stieglitz's "291" Gallery. O'Keeffe made giant steps toward becoming an artist by developing a more original approach to art.
While in South Carolina teaching at a small college in 1915 and 1916, O'Keeffe decided to reject the influence of other artists and to paint
and draw to please only herself. This resulted in a series of highly original black and white charcoal drawings. She sent the drawings to
Anita Pollitzer, a friend and fellow student from New York, who showed them to Alfred Stieglitz. Organic, natural forms define these abstract drawings which visually incorporate O'Keeffe's idea of drawing based on the elements of design.
Returning to Texas in the fall of 1916 provided O'Keeffe with the inspiration to produce highly expressive images. She re-introduced
brilliant color into her work, using it freely as a tool of expression, just as she had before used only line, form and composition. She also began to utilize a technique which she would follow throughout her life: the repetition of one idea in a series of pictures dealing
with the same subject.
Stieglitz and O'Keeffe corresponded regularly from 1916 to 1918. The drawings which the artist sent to Stieglitz from Canyon, Texas,
formed the nucleus of her first one-woman show held at "291" during the spring of 1917. She traveled to New York to see the exhibition,
which had bee' n taken down and had to be rehung. When the paintings and drawings were re-installed, Stieglitz took his first photographs of O'Keeffe, beginning a study that would last until 1937. At Stieglitz's urging, O'Keeffe returned to New York in 1918, and the two were married in 1924.
During her career,which spanned nearly 70 years, O'Keeffe's art continually fluctuated between the real and abstract. She presented
identifiable subjects, whether a flower, a bone or a rock, and explored the idea of that object until she had exhausted her interest in the
image.
Stieglitz supported her work with yearly solo exhibitions, first at the Intimate Gallery, and subsequently at An American Place after "291"
closed. In 1929, tiring of annual sojourns to Lake George with the large Stieglitz family and of the routine of her life, O'Keeffe began
spending summers in New Mexico. There she continued to use her surroundings as her most frequent subject, creating innovative renderings of the magnificent beauty and mystery of the desert landscape. By picking up pieces of the desert, bones and rocks, and by isolating and magnifying them, she painted the essence of the land she loved.
After Stieglitz's death in 1946, O'Keeffe returned to New Mexico to live permanently, but she traveled frequently and gained inspiration
from new sites and experiences.
Throughout her life Georgia O'Keeffe maintained an unusually close visual relationship to the world around her. By realistic rendering or
by capturing the essence of the land by removing one element which becomes a symbol of the subject, O'Keeffe remains today, as we celebrate the centennial of her birth , one of Americas most independent and innovative artists.
Review source:
Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. An Exhibition of Paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe, Pamphlet, 1953; (http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth183370/ : accessed March 04, 2015), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, http://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas , Texas. ON PICTION-- Catalog from the exhibition 'Georgia O'Keeffe: Paintings,' February 1-22, 1953, at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts in Dallas, Texas. Includes: list of artworks, selected images, brief biography.
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artists_and_designers-0094.xml.nores