O'Keeffe, Georgia, 1887-1986
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Georgia O’Keeffe is one of the most significant artists of the 20th century, renowned for her contribution to modern art.Born on November 15, 1887, the second of seven children, Georgia Totto O’Keeffe grew up on a farm near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. By the time she graduated from high school in 1905, O’Keeffe had determined to make her way as an artist.
She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York, where she learned the techniques of traditional painting. The direction of her artistic practice shifted dramatically four years later when she studied the revolutionary ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow. Dow offered O’Keeffe an alternative to established ways of thinking about art. She experimented with abstraction for two years while she taught art in West Texas. Through a series of abstract charcoal drawings, she developed a personal language to better express her feelings and ideas.
O’Keeffe mailed some of these highly abstract drawings to a friend in New York City. Her friend showed them to Alfred Stieglitz, the art dealer and renowned photographer, who would eventually become O’Keeffe’s husband. He became the first to exhibit her work, in 1916.
By the mid-1920s, O’Keeffe was recognized as one of America’s most important and successful artists, known for her paintings of New York skyscrapers—an essentially American symbol of modernity—as well as her equally radical depictions of flowers.
In the summer of 1929, O’Keeffe made the first of many trips to northern New Mexico. The stark landscape and Native American and Hispanic cultures of the region inspired a new direction in O’Keeffe’s art. For the next two decades she spent most summers living and working in New Mexico. She made the state her permanent home in 1949, three years after Stieglitz’s death.
Oil on canvas of Ram's Skull Head and Blue Morning Glory on the proper left side of horn.O’Keeffe’s New Mexico paintings coincided with a growing interest in regional scenes by American Modernists seeking a distinctive view of the nation.In the 1950s, O’Keeffe began to travel internationally. She painted and sketched works that evoke the spectacular places she visited, including the mountain peaks of Peru and Japan’s Mount Fuji. At the age of seventy-three, she took on a new subject: aerial views of clouds and sky.Suffering from macular degeneration and failing vision, O’Keeffe painted her last unassisted oil painting in 1972. However, O’Keeffe’s will to create did not diminish with her eyesight. In 1977, at age ninety, she observed, “I can see what I want to paint. The thing that makes you want to create is still there.”
Late in life, and almost blind, she enlisted the help of several assistants to enable her to continue creating art. In these works, she drew on favorite motifs from memory and her vivid imagination.
Georgia O’Keeffe died in Santa Fe on March 6, 1986, at the age of 98.
Archival Resources
Role | Title | Holding Repository | |
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referencedIn | Abbott, Lyman, 1835-1922. Papers of the Barringer family [manuscript], 1828-1963. | University of Virginia. Library | |
creatorOf | Adelyne Dohme Breeskin papers | Archives of American Art | |
referencedIn | Albert M. Bender papers | Archives of American Art | |
creatorOf | Alfred Stieglitz / Georgia O'Keeffe archive, 1728-1986 | Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library | |
referencedIn | Alfred Stieglitz / Georgia O'Keeffe archive, 1728-1986 | Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library | |
referencedIn | Alfred Stieglitz / Georgia O'Keeffe collection, circa 1893-[ongoing] | Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library | |
referencedIn | Alice Graeme Korff papers | Archives of American Art | |
referencedIn | Aline Meyer Liebman papers | Archives of American Art | |
referencedIn | American Federation of Arts records | Archives of American Art | |
referencedIn | Andrew Dasburg Papers, 1908-1981 | Syracuse University. Library. Special Collections Research Center |
Showing 1 to 10 of 193 entries
Bibliographic and Digital Archival Resources
Role | Title | Holding Repository | |
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referencedIn | Oral history interview with Charles Alan | Archives of American Art | |
referencedIn | Oral history interview with Eleanor "Brownie" Hibben | Archives of American Art | |
referencedIn | Oral history interview with Fritz Scholder | Archives of American Art | |
referencedIn | Oral history interview with Narcissa Swift King | Archives of American Art | |
referencedIn | Oral history interview with Paul Caponigro | Archives of American Art | |
referencedIn | Oral history interview with Peter Agostini | Archives of American Art | |
referencedIn | Oral history interview with Terry Dintenfass | Archives of American Art | |
referencedIn | Oral history interview with Todd Webb | Archives of American Art |
Showing 1 to 8 of 8 entries
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Relation | Name |
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associatedWith | Agostini, Peter. |
associatedWith | Alan, Charles, 1908?-1975. |
associatedWith | American Federation of Arts. |
associatedWith | Amon Carter Museum of Western Art |
associatedWith | Anderson Galleries, Inc. |
associatedWith | Asbury, Edith Evans, 1910-2008. |
associatedWith | Barringer family. |
associatedWith | Barringer, Anna, 1885-1977, |
associatedWith | Barry, William David. |
associatedWith | Bender, Albert M. (Albert Maurice), 1866-1941. |
Showing 1 to 10 of 145 entries
Person
Birth 1887-11-15
Death 1986-03-06
Female
Americans
English
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Variant Names
Georgia O'Keefe
O'Keeffe, Georgia Totto, 1887-1986
Stieglitz, Alfred, Mrs., 1887-1986
Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, 1887-1986
Stieglitz, Georgia O., 1887-1986
オキーフ, ジョージア, 1887-1986
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O'Keeffe, Georgia, 1887-1986
O'Keeffe, Georgia, 1887-1986 | Title |
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