Georgia O'Keeffe's Biography Georgia O'Keeffe's Biography Beginning Years: Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was born November 15, 1887 in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Georgia knew from an early age that she was going to be an artist. She and her sister were taught early on to draw by a grammar school teacher and were taught to paint by a local watercolor artist. In 1905, Georgia graduated and continued her art studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she was the recipient of top honors during her first year. In September of 1907, she resumed her studies at New York's Art Student League, earning a scholarship. In 1912, Georgia took a teaching job at the Chatham Episcopal Institute. A year later, she applied for and was hired for a teaching position as a drawing supervisor in Texas. But after years of teaching and having almost no time for herself, she decided it was time to paint again. What resulted was a series of charcoal drawings she says were based on images she had in her head. She sent these drawings to her friend in New York, Anita Pollitzer.

Against Georgia's wishes, she showed them to Alfred Stieglitz, famous photographer and owner of Gallery 291 . His reaction to her drawings was overwhelming stating "At last, a woman on paper!" He decided to show her drawings without her permission. When she found out, she traveled to New York to confront him but he convinced her to keep them on display, gaining a fair amount of buzz. Her Life with Alfred and After his Death: In 1923, Stieglitz held a major exhibit of O'Keeffe's work at the Anderson Galleries, the first of many of her showings. The following year, Stieglitz and his wife of 31 years divorced and he quickly asked Georgia to marry him. That same year marked the first time O'Keeffe painted a large, magnified flower which she would become famous for. Stieglitz and O'Keeffe moved to the Shelton Hotel in New York and lived there for the next 12 years where Georgia would be inspired to paint the magnificent views from their 30th floor apartment. But three years later, she felt the need to travel and took a trip to New Mexico which would change her life for good.

Georgia returned to New Mexico every summer until 1946, when her husband died. Only then did she decide to move from New York and permanently reside in New Mexico, calling it "her land". And though her husband had passed away, she continued to exhibit her work. In 1951, O'Keeffe made her first trip to Mexico where she met the artists Diego Rivera, Frieda Kahlo, and Miguel Covarrubias. She spent the next decade traveling throughout the world and her fame continued through the 1950's and 60's. Over the years, her eyesight began to deteriorate and painting became difficult. She could no longer paint without some assistance. She hired the help of Juan Hamilton who helped her as much as possible. She did her last unassisted oil painting in 1972. In between this time, she received numerous awards and honors. In 1984 O'Keeffe moved to Santa Fe to live with Juan Hamilton and his family. Her only regret at the continuing loss of her eyesight was "that I will not be able to see this beautiful country anymore...

unless the Indians are right and my spirit will walk here after I'm gone." One year later, she died, March 6, 1986 at the age of 98. Her body was cremated and Hamilton scattered her ashes over her beloved 'faraway'. Biographies: On these pages, you will find information that sheds light on the life of the great American artist Georgia O'Keeffe . Like any public figure, some things are common knowledge while other information is more revealing about who the person was and where they were coming from. One of Georgia's inspirations for her works comes from the surroundings of Sante Fe New Mexico, which she referred to as the " The Faraway ". After a summer trip to New Mexico with a friend, O'Keeffe returned every year until settling after her husband's death. There, she was stirred by the never-ending landscapes and open skies which she happily incorporated into her works. Also, you will learn about the man who introduced us to O'Keeffe's works, Alfred Stieglitz . A renowned photographer, Steiglitz opened a number of galleries, including Gallery 291 which was the location of O'Keeffe's first exhibit.

» See all Georgia O’keeffe Articles Georgia O’Keeffe summary: Georgia O’Keefe was born on November 15th, 1887 in Wisconsin. Her interest in painting began at an early age, and O’Keeffe completed her regular education and then went on to attend the Art Institute of Chicago. She spent several years working in Chicago as a commercial artist before traveling to Texas and becoming the the art supervisor of a public school in Amarillo. She moved to New York City to take art classes at Columbia University. She then returned to Texas, where she spent two years training art teachers at a College. Later known for her captivating paintings of flowers, she received her first gallery showing in 1916 by famous photographer Alfred Steiglitz. O’Keeffe married Steiglitz in 1924, and the two became both personal and professional partners until he died in 1946. After her husband’s death, O’Keeffe moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, a city that she had fallen in love with in the 1920s and had visited regularly since.

In addition to her floral paintings, the beautiful landscapes inspired O’Keeffe to catch the magnificence of her environment in her paintings as well. The barrenness of the desert also inspired her to paint animal bones, capturing both the solitude and harshness of the desert along with its beauty. Her later works often featured a door in an adobe wall with a sky background. Her art was the first retrospective by a female artist to be shown at Museum of Modern Art. She also won numerous awards, including the Medal of Freedom, a Gold Medal of Painting, and the National Medal of Arts. About Georgia O'Keeffe - The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Her Houses Born on November 15, 1887, the second of seven children, Georgia Totto O’Keeffe grew up on a farm near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1905-1906 and the Art Students League in New York in 1907-1908. Under the direction of William Merritt Chase , F. Luis Mora , and Kenyon Cox she learned the techniques of traditional realist painting.

The direction of her artistic practice shifted dramatically in 1912 when she studied the revolutionary ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow . Dow’s emphasis on composition and design offered O’Keeffe an alternative to realism. She experimented for two years, while she taught art in South Carolina and west Texas. Seeking to find a personal visual language through which she could express her feelings and ideas, she began a series of abstract charcoal drawings in 1915 that represented a radical break with tradition and made O’Keeffe one of the very first American artists to practice pure abstraction. O’Keeffe mailed some of these highly abstract drawings to a friend in New York City, who showed them to Alfred Stieglitz. An art dealer and internationally known photographer, he was the first to exhibit her work in 1916. He would eventually become O’Keeffe’s husband. 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 image of modernity—as well as flowers.

In the summer of 1929, O’Keeffe made the first of many trips to northern New Mexico. The stark landscape, distinct indigenous art, and unique regional style of adobe architecture inspired a new direction in O’Keeffe’s artwork. For the next two decades she spent part of most years living and working in New Mexico. She made the state her permanent home in 1949, three years after Stieglitz’s death. O’Keeffe’s New Mexico paintings coincided with a growing interest in regional scenes by American Modernists seeking a distinctive view of America. Her simplified and refined representations of this region express a deep personal response to the high desert terrain. In the 1950s, O’Keeffe began to travel internationally. She created paintings that evoked a sense of the spectacular places she visited, including the mountain peaks of Peru and Japan’s Mount Fuji. At the age of seventy-three she embarked on a new series focused on the clouds in the sky and the rivers below. Suffering from macular degeneration and discouraged by her failing eyesight, O’Keeffe painted her last unassisted oil painting in 1972.

But 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 again create art. In these works she returned to favorite visual motifs from her memory and vivid imagination. Georgia O’Keeffe died in Santa Fe, on March 6, 1986, at the age of 98. To learn more about O’Keeffe, click here to see a list of recommended biographies and resources. The art of Georgia O’Keeffe has been well known for eight decades in this country and for many years has been attaining similar prominence abroad. More than 500 examples of her works are in over 100 public collections in Asia, Europe, and North and Central America. In addition, since her work was first exhibited in New York in 1916, it has been included in hundreds of solo and group exhibitions organized around the world.

The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum cares for a growing collection of artwork by O’Keeffe, including nearly 150 oil paintings, nearly 700 sketches, and important pastels, watercolors, and charcoals. Our collections also include O’Keeffe’s personal property, including her art materials, and a significant archive of documentation and photography of her life and times. Georgia O’Keeffe owned two homes in the Chama River valley north of Santa Fe. She bought the first one at the Ghost Ranch in 1940 and the second one in the village of Abiquiu in 1945. In both places, she made the homes her own, suited to her art and life and she occupied both until 1984, when she moved to Santa Fe. The Museum owns and preserves these historic properties. The Abiquiu Home and Studio is open for tours by appointment . Approximately 60 miles northwest of Santa Fe, the Ghost Ranch house is surrounded by the stunning landscape that inspired her art for more than 40 years. Owned and cared for by the Museum, the Ghost Ranch home is not currently open to the public.

The 5,000-square-foot compound in Abiquiu was in ruins in 1945 when she first saw it. For the next four years, O’Keeffe supervised its restoration, which was carried out by her friend, Maria Chabot. The house was surrounded by a wall which enclosed a large irrigated garden , allowing her to grow fresh fruits and vegetables. At the center of the home was a patio with a large wooden door, which excited the artist’s imagination and motivated her to buy the property. To obtain a view of the Chama River Valley, O’Keeffe converted a stable and buggy house at the edge of the mesa into her studio and bedroom. With the addition of plate glass windows, O’Keeffe gained spectacular views of the ever-changing color of the cottonwood trees below and the road that meandered through the valley. She moved from New York to make New Mexico permanently in 1949, and lived at either Abiquiu or Ghost Ranch until 1984, when she moved to Santa Fe.

Daily 10 AM - 5 PM | Fridays open until 7 PM 217 Johnson Street How did Georgia O'Keefe become famous | How did Georgia O'Keefe become famous How did Georgia O'Keefe become famous? The artwork of Georgia O'Keeffe, an American artist, made her famous. From her skyscraper paintings to her natural paintings, her unique artwork has earned her a noteworthy place in history.Backgro... Read More » Top Q&A For: How did Georgia O'Keefe become famous Famous Colleges in Georgia? Georgia is home to dozens of two- and four-year colleges. Although each college in Georgia is unique, a few of them are famous, having widespread notoriety for things like sports or a rich history.... Read More » Why is Georgia O'Keeffe famous? Painter Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) helped to define American modernism in the early decades of the 20th century. The sole woman in an influential group of avant-garde artists affiliated with Amer... Read More » How to Become Famous? Fame.There are lots of ways to become famous.

You can write a pop song, invent a time machine or appear on a reality TV program. The best way, however, is to become outstanding in whatever area int... Read More » How do I become Instagram famous? follow people, they'll follow back hopefully Georgia O'Keeffe Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works | The Art Story Like The Art Story on Facebook Follow The Art Story on Google+ "When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else." Synopsis Georgia O'Keeffe played a pivotal role in the development of American modernism and its relationship to European avante garde movements of the early twentieth century. Producing a substantial body of work over seven decades, she sought to capture the emotion and power of objects through abstracting the natural world. Alfred Stieglitz identified her as the first female American modernist, whose paintings of flowers, barren landscapes, and close-up still lifes have become a part of the mythology and iconography of the American artistic landscape.

Key Ideas O'Keeffe incorporated the techniques of other artists and was especially influenced by Paul Strand's use of cropping in his photographs; she was one of the first artists to adapt the method to painting by rendering close-ups of uniquely American objects that were highly detailed yet abstract. O'Keeffe did not follow any specific artistic movement, but like Arthur Dove she experimented with abstracting motifs from nature. She worked in series, synthesizing abstraction and realism to produce works that emphasized the primary forms of nature. While some of these works are highly detailed, in others, she stripped away what she considered the inessential to focus on shape and color. Through intense observation of nature, experimentation with scale, and nuanced use of line and color, O'Keeffe's art remained grounded in representation even while pushing at its limits. From the 1940s through the 1960s in particular, O'Keeffe's art was outside the mainstream as she was one of the few artists to adhere to representation in a period when others were exploring non-representation or had abandoned painting altogether. Most Important Art Petunia No. 2 (1924) Petunia No.

2, one of O'Keeffe's first large-scale renderings of a flower, represents the beginning of her exploration of a theme that would mark her career. In this painting, she magnifies the flower's form to emphasize its shape and color. She stated that "nobody really sees a flower - really - it is so small - we haven't time - and to see takes time... So I said to myself - I'll paint what I see - what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it." Her flower images often received interpretations that O'Keeffe disagreed with, particularly from feminist critics who saw these paintings as veiled illusions to female genitalia. For O'Keeffe, there was no hidden symbolism, just the essence of the flower. In fact, the anatomy of the petunia is incredibly detailed, and O'Keeffe may have been emphasizing the androgyny of the reproductive parts in order to counter the idea that her subject matter was connected to her gender.

Though American and European artists had experimented with abstraction for at least a decade, O'Keeffe, like Dove, focused on images from nature and O'Keeffe was the only artist to consistently use flowers as a motif. Oil on canvas - Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe Like The Art Story on Facebook Biography Childhood and Early Training Georgia O'Keeffe was born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin in 1887, the second of seven children. She received early encouragement to study art from her mother and took watercolor lessons from a local artist, Sara Mann. O'Keeffe came from a family where female education was stressed and she was fortunate to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1905 to 1906 where she studied with John Vanderpoel. In the fall of 1907, O'Keeffe moved to New York City and attended classes at the Art Students League, studying under the artist-teacher William Merritt Chase. A prize she won for one of her still lifes, allowed her to attend the League's summer school in Lake George, New York.

While in NYC, she frequented exhibitions at Gallery 291, which was owned by photographer Alfred Stieglitz and was one of the few places in the United States where European avant-garde art was exhibited. For the first time O'Keeffe was exposed to popular European artists, such as Auguste Rodin and Henri Matisse. She abandoned the pursuit of art as a career in 1908 for four years, taking a job in Chicago as a commercial artist. She began focusing on her art again in 1912, after attending a drawing class at the University of Virginia's summer school. Her teacher, Alon Bement, professed an innovative teaching style that was heavily influenced by the artist Arthur Wesley Dow. While teaching at Columbia College in South Carolina in 1915, O'Keeffe began to experiment with Dow's theory of self-exploration through art. She took natural forms, such as ferns, clouds, and waves, and began a small series of charcoal drawings that simplified them into expressive, abstracted combinations of shapes and lines.

After completing this series, O'Keeffe mailed a few of them to her friend Anita Pollitzer, a former classmate, who brought the drawings to the attention of Alfred Stieglitz in January 1916. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mature Period Recognizing her potential, Stieglitz began a correspondence with O'Keeffe. Unbeknownst to O'Keeffe, he exhibited ten of her charcoals at his Gallery 291. He sent her photographs of her drawings on exhibit and this began their professional relationship. While O'Keeffe continued to teach, she returned to New York in 1917 to view her first solo exhibition, arranged by Stieglitz at 291. During this time, O'Keeffe and Stieglitz began a love affair that would last until his death.

In 1918, Stieglitz offered to financially support O'Keeffe for one year so that she could live and paint in New York. She took a leave of absence from her teaching position and for the first time dedicated herself solely to making art. Stieglitz divorced his first wife, and he and O'Keeffe married in 1924. During the 1920s, Stieglitz introduced O'Keeffe to his friends and fellow artists - the Stieglitz Circle - that included Marsden Hartley, Arthur Dove, John Marin, and Paul Strand. Stieglitz and his Circle, as they were called, championed modernism in the United States. O'Keeffe was profoundly influenced by Strand's photography and the camera's ability to behave like a magnifying lens, as well as Charles Sheeler's Precisionism. Following these interests, she began making large-scale paintings of natural forms at close range, and, during this time, also switched from watercolors to oil paint. In addition to flowers, O'Keeffe depicted New York skyscrapers and other architectural forms.

By the mid-1920s, O'Keeffe was recognized as one of the most significant American artists of the time and her art began to command high prices. O'Keeffe's fascination with the landscape of New Mexico began in 1929, when she was a guest of famous arts patron, Mabel Dodge Luhan, at Dodge's ranch near Taos. O'Keeffe became enamored with New Mexico's landscape of vistas and barren land, returning every summer until 1949 to paint. Works produced from this landscape captured the beauty of the desert, its vast skies, distinctive architectural forms, and bones, which she collected in the desert. O'Keeffe's eventual purchase of two properties in New Mexico further connected her to the land. During the 1930s and 1940s, O'Keeffe's popularity continued to grow and she was honored with two important retrospectives, the first in 1943 at the Art Institute of Chicago and the second in 1946 at the Museum of Modern Art, their first retrospective of work by a woman.

Late Years and Death In 1949, three years after Stieglitz's death, O'Keeffe moved permanently to New Mexico. In the 1950s, she produced a series of works that featured the architectural forms of her patio wall and door at Abiquiu, one of her two homes near Santa Fe. O'Keeffe began to travel extensively, gathering inspiration for her work. She received many accolades, including membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Medal of Freedom, and the National Medal of Arts. Despite waning popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, a retrospective held by the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1970 revived her career and brought her to the attention of a new generation of women in the era of feminism. Despite failing eyesight, O'Keeffe continued to produce art, working in watercolor, pencil, and clay throughout the 1970s. Although she had lost her central vision by the age of 84, she continued to paint. Her last paintings consist of simple abstract lines and shapes and hearken back to her early charcoal drawings.

Legacy Georgia O'Keeffe spent 70 years making art and contributing to the development of American modernism. She was a prominent member of the creative Stieglitz Circle, influencing early American modernists. She is notable for her role as a pioneering female artist, and although she disavowed their interpretation of her work, she was a strong influence on the artists of the Feminist art movement, including Judy Chicago and Miriam Shapiro, who saw feminine imagery in O'Keeffe's flower paintings. A prolific artist, she produced more than 2000 works over the course of her career. The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe is the first museum in the United States dedicated to a female artist, and its research center sponsors significant fellowships for scholars of modern American art. Influences and Connections Georgia O'Keeffe - Painter - Biography.com Georgia O'Keeffe Georgia O'Keeffe is a 20th century American painter and pioneer of American modernism best known for her canvases depicting flowers, skyscrapers, animal skulls and southeastern landscapes.

IN THESE GROUPS » quotes “When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else.” “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.” “” Georgia O'Keeffe Georgia O'Keeffe - Mini Biography (TV-14; 3:42) A pioneer of Modern Art, Georgia O'Keeffe created large-scale paintings of natural forms and flowers at close range. She began to spend much of her time in New Mexico and created imagery synonymous with the American Southwest. Synopsis Georgia O'Keeffe was born on November 15, 1887, in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York. Photographer and art dealer Alfred Stieglitz gave O'Keeffe her first gallery show in 1916 and the couple married in 1924.

Considered the "mother of American modernism," O'Keeffe moved to New Mexico after her husband's death and was inspired by the landscape to create numerous well-known paintings. Georgia O'Keeffe died on March 6, 1986 at the age of 98. Early Life Artist Georgia O'Keeffe was born on November 15, 1887, on a wheat farm in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Her parents grew up together as neighbors; her father Francis Calixtus O'Keeffe was Irish, and her mother Ida Totto was of Dutch and Hungarian heritage. Georgia, the second of seven children, was named after her Hungarian maternal grandfather George Totto. O'Keeffe's mother, who had aspired to become a doctor, encouraged her children to become well-educated. As a child, O'Keeffe developed a curiosity about the natural world and an early interest in becoming an artist, which her mother encouraged by arranging lessons with a local artist. Art appreciation was a family affair for O'Keeffe: her two grandmothers and two of her sisters also enjoyed painting.

O'Keeffe continued to study art, as well as academic subjects at Sacred Heart Academy, a strict and exclusive high school in Madison, Wisconsin. While her family relocated to Williamsburg, Virginia in 1902, O'Keeffe lived with her aunt in Wisconsin and attended Madison High School. She joined her family in 1903 when she was 15 and already a budding artist driven by an independent spirit. In Williamsburg, O'Keeffe attended Chatham Episcopal Institute, a boarding school, where she was well-liked and stood out as individual, who dressed and acted differently than other students. She also became known as a talented artist and was the art editor of the school yearbook. Training As Artist After graduating from high school, O'Keeffe went to Chicago where she attended the Art Institute of Chicago, studying with John Vanderpoel from 1905 to 1906. She ranked at the top of her competitive class, but contracted typhoid fever and had to take a year off to recuperate. After she regained her health, O'Keeffe traveled to New York City in 1907 to continue her art studies.

She took classes at the Art Students League where she learned realist painting techniques from William Merritt Chase, F. Luis Mora and Kenyon Cox. One of her still lives, Dead Rabbit with Copper Pot (1908), earned her the prize of attending the League's summer school in Lake George, New York. While she continued to develop as an artist in the classroom, O'Keeffe's expanded her ideas about art by visiting galleries, in particular 291, founded by photographers Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen. Located at 291 5th Avenue, Steichen's former studio, 291 was a pioneering gallery that elevated the art of photography and introduced the avant-garde work of modern European and American artists. After a year of study in New York City, O'Keeffe returned to Virginia where her family had fallen on hard times: her mother was bed-ridden with tuberculosis and her father's business had gone bankrupt. Unable to afford continuing her art studies, O'Keeffe returned to Chicago in 1908 to work as a commercial artist. After two years, she returned to Virginia, eventually moving with her family to Charlottesville.

In 1912, she took an art class at the summer school of the University of Virginia, where she studied with Alon Bement. A faculty member of Teachers College at Columbia University, Bement introduced O'Keeffe to the revolutionary ideas of his Columbia colleague, Arthur Wesley Dow, whose approach to composition and design was influenced by the principles of Japanese art. O'Keeffe began experimenting with her art, breaking from realism and developing her own visual expression through more abstract compositions. As she experimented with her art, O'Keeffe taught art at public schools in Amarillo, Texas, from 1912 to 1914. She was also Bement's teaching assistant during the summers and took class from Dow at Teacher's College. In 1915, while teaching at Columbia College in Columbia, South Carolina, O'Keeffe began a series of abstract charcoal drawings, and was one of the first American artists to practice pure abstraction," according to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum . O’Keeffe mailed a few of her drawings to Anita Pollitzer, a friend and former classmate, who showed the work to Stieglitz, the influential art dealer.

Taken by O'Keeffe's work, he and O'Keeffe began a correspondence and, unbeknownst to her, he exhibited 10 of her drawings at 291 in 1916. She confronted him about the exhibit, but allowed him to continue to show the work. In 1917, he presented her first solo show. A year later, she moved to New York, and Stieglitz found a place for her to live and work. He also provided financial support for her to focus on her art. Realizing their deep connection, the artists fell in love and began an affair. Stieglitz and his wife divorced, and he and O'Keeffe married in 1924. They lived in New York City and spent their summers in Lake George, New York, where Stieglitz's family had a home. Famous Artwork As an artist, Stieglitz, who was 23 years older than O'Keeffe, found in her a muse, taking over 300 photographs of her, including both portraits and nudes. As an art dealer, he championed her work and promoted her career.

She joined Stieglitz's circle of artist friends including Steichen, Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, Arthur Dove, John Marin, and Paul Strand. Inspired by the vibrancy of the modern art movement, she began to experiment with perspective, painting larger-scale close-ups of flowers, the first of which was Petunia No. 2, which was exhibited in 1925, followed by works such as Black Iris (1926) and Oriental Poppies (1928). "If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it no one would see what I see because I would paint it small like the flower is small," O'Keeffe explained. "So I said to myself - I'll paint what I see - what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it - I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers." O'Keeffe also turned her artist's eye to New York City skyscrapers, the symbol of modernity, in paintings including City Night (1926), Shelton Hotel, New York No.

1 (1926) and Radiator Bldg—Night, New York (1927). Following numerous solo exhibitions, O'Keeffe had her first retrospective, Paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe, which opened at the Brooklyn Museum in 1927. By this time, she had become one of the most important and successful American artists, which was a major achievement for a female artist in the male-dominated art world. Her pioneering success would make her a feminist icon for later generations. Inspired by New Mexico In the summer of 1929, O'Keeffe would find a new direction for her art when she made her first visit to northern New Mexico. The landscape, architecture and local Navajo culture inspired her, and she would return to New Mexico, which she called "the faraway," in the summers to paint. During this period, she produced iconic paintings including Black Cross, New Mexico (1929), Cow's Skull: Red, White and Blue (1931) and Ram’s Head, White Hollycock, Hills (1935), among other works.

In the 1940s, O’Keeffe’s work was celebrated in retrospectives at the Art Institute of Chicago (1943) and at the Museum of Modern Art (1946), which was the museum’s first retrospective of a female artist’s work. O'Keeffe split her time between New York, living with Stieglitz, and painting in New Mexico. She was particularly inspired by Ghost Ranch, north of Abiquiú, and she decided to move into a house there in 1940. Five years later, O'Keeffe bought a second house in Abiquiú. Back in New York, Stieglitz had begun to mentor Dorothy Norman, a young photographer who later helped manage his gallery, An American Place. The close relationship between Stieglitz and Norman eventually developed into an affair. In his later years, Stieglitz's health deteriorated and he suffered a fatal stroke on July 13, 1946 at the age of 82. O'Keeffe was with him when he died and was the executor of his estate.

Three years after Stieglitz's death, O'Keeffe moved to New Mexico in 1949, the same year she was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In the 1950s and 1960s, O'Keeffe spent much of her time traveling the world, finding new inspirations from the places she visited. Among her new work was a series depicting aerial views of clouds as is seen in Sky above Clouds, IV (1965). In 1970, a retrospective of her work at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City renewed her popularity, especially among members of the feminist art movement. Death and Legacy In her later years, O'Keeffe suffered from macular degeneration and began to lose her eyesight. As a result of her failing vision, she painted her last unassisted oil painting in 1972, however, her urge to create didn't falter. With the help of assistants, she continued to make art and she wrote the bestselling book Georgia O'Keeffe (1976). "I can see what I want to paint," she said at the age of 90.

"The thing that makes you want to create is still there." In 1977, President Gerald Ford presented O'Keeffe with the Medal of Freedom and, in 1985, she received the National Medal of Arts. O'Keeffe died on March 6, 1986, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and her ashes were scattered at Cerro Pedernal, which is depicted in several of her paintings. The pioneering artist produced thousands of works over the course of her career, many of which are on exhibit at museums around the world. The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico is dedicated to preserving the life, art and legacy of the artist, and offers tours of her home and studio, which is a national historic landmark. Georgia O'Keeffe paintings, biography, and quotes. of Georgia O'Keeffe Gegorgia O'Keeffe and her paintings One of the first female painters to achieve worldwide acclaim from critics and the general public, Georgia O'Keeffe was an American painter who created innovative impressionist images that challenged perceptions and evolved constantly throughout her career.

After studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago she attended the Art Students League in New York, studying under William Merritt Chase. Though she impressed the league with her oil painting "Dead Rabbit with Copper Pot," she lacked self-confidence and decided to pursue a career as a commercial artist and later as a teacher and then head of the art department at West Texas A&M University. At that time she became acquainted with a landscape that would become iconic within her work, the Palo Duro Canyon. O'Keeffe did not stop producing charcoal drawings and watercolors during her hiatus, some of which were seen by Alfred Stieglitz, her future husband. Stieglitz was a successful photographer and modern art promoter who owned the 291 Gallery in New York City. He was struck by the sincerity within her work and organized her first solo show in 2017, composed of oil paintings and watercolors completed in Texas. After their marriage, O'Keeffe became part of an inner circle of American modernist painters who frequently showed in Stieglitz's gallery. Her work shifted towards oil paintings which appeared to be magnified natural forms.

In 1925, her first large-scale flower painting was exhibited in New York City. Petunia marked the beginning of a period of exploration on the flower theme that would continue throughout her career. By magnifying her subject, she emphasized shape and color and brought attention to the tiny details within the flower. During her life, flower is a subject that Gegorgia O'Keeffe always returns to, as artists have always returned to beloved themes - Vincent van Gogh his Sun Flowers, Paul Cezanne his Apples, and Claude Monet his Water Lilies. O'Keeffe's painting's subjects caught the attention of collectors and critics who responded with alacrity. Their discussion of the O'Keeffe's works were often colored by the popularized tenets of Sigmund Freud , which by the 1920s were widespread in America. In a cultural atmosphere initially titillated and gradually transformed by his theories, art and its critical reception - like many other aspects of modern life - where invariably, and indelibly colored by Freudian consideration.

Many claim that the images which Gegorgia O'Keeffe created when painting flowers, was work which was highly sexual, and many went as far as to say it was an erotic art form; but O'Keeffe rejected that theory consistently. In an attempt to move the attention of her critic's away from their Freudian interpretations of her work, she began to paint in a more representational style. In her series on New York, O'Keeffe excelled in painting architectural structures as highly realistic and expertly employed the style of Precisionism within her work. "Radiator Building-Night, New York" from 1927 can also be interpreted as a double portrait of Steiglitz and O'Keeffe. Object portraiture of this kind was popular amongst the Steiglitz circle at the time and greatly influenced by the poetry of Gertrude Stein. In 1929, seeking solitude and an escape from a crowd that perhaps felt artistically and socially oppressive, O'Keeffe traveled to New Mexico and began an inspirational love affair with the visual scenery of the state.

For 20 years she spent part of every year working in New Mexico, becoming increasingly interested in the forms of animal skulls and the southwest landscapes. While her popularity continued to grow, O'Keeffe increasingly sought solace in New Mexico. Her painting Ram's Head with Hollyhock encapsulates so much novelty while still maintaining with her classic aesthetic of magnifying and showing the beauty in small, natural details. While her interest in the southwest increased, so did the value of her paintings in the New York galleries. She was featured in two one-woman retrospectives at the Art Institute of Chicago and the The Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan in the 40's, becoming the first woman to ever have a retrospective at the latter. She developed obsessive interest in formations of rock near her home in New Mexico and spent hours painting in sun and wind. In 1946 O'Keeffe's husband Stieglitz suffered a cerebral thrombosis and she moved back to New York for three years after his death to settle his estate before permanently settling in New Mexico. With the loss of Stieglitz came the lessening of her public exposure.

O'Keeffe became once again interested in architectural forms, this time focusing on details like her patio wall and door. Her 1958 painting Ladder to the Moon marked yet another shift in her work which many interpreted as a self-portrait that depicted the transitory nature of her life. Others viewed it as a religious statement that showed a link between the earth and cosmic forces above it. Adding onto a history of abstraction, in the early 1960s O'Keeffe painted an extensive collection of aerial cloudscapes inspired from her view from the windows of airplanes. In 1970 the Whitney Museum of American Art began the first retrospective career of her work in New York since 1946 which greatly revived her career. Though her eyesight became compromised in the 1970s, she continued working in pencil and charcoal until 1984 and also produced clay pots and a watercolor series. In 1986 she died at her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico and requested her ashes be scattered over the top of Pedernal Mountain. Following her death a large portion of her estate's assets were transferred to the Georgia O'Keefe Foundation.

Later when this foundation dissolved the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum was established in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Assets from her estate included an immense body of work and archived materials. Her home in New Mexico was designated a National Historic Landmark is also owned by the O'Keeffe museum. While her work varied between the literal portraits, abstractions and landscapes, O'Keeffe's work is still most identified by her iconic flower paintings. In 2014 the Georgia O'Keefe Museum sold a floral painting for $44 million dollars at auction setting the record for artwork sold by a female artist. The piece, titled Jimson Weed/White Flower No.1 was painted in 1932 and is an iconic representation of a large-scale flower. Though it may be the most recognizable style of O'Keefe's that collected the large price, her varied body of work shows much more variety than the one style she's most known for. Within her work and life, O'Keeffe was unapologetically true to her own vision. When she did attempt to supersede her intuition to complete hired work, she became troubled and always retreated back to what felt familiar and natural.

She remains one of the most important and innovative artists of the twentieth century. MOST POPULAR PAINTINGS Georgia O'Keeffe GEORGIA O'KEEFFE (18871986) Georgia O'Keeffe Even when she was a baby, Georgia O'Keeffe saw the world around her a little differently than most people do. Can you describe anything that you saw before you were a year old? Georgia O'Keeffe could. The shapes and patterns on a quilt she played on before she could even stand up were still clear to her almost eighty years later! When Georgia O'Keeffe was growing up, most girls learned embroidery and other sorts of artwork that help decorate a house. Some girls became art teachers. But very few girls were encouraged to try to make their livings as artists! O'Keeffe didn't see things that way at all. She started taking art lessons, and when she was twelve years old, she decided to become an artist. One day, in her high school art class, she experimented with a new way of looking at the world. Holding up a wildflower, her teacher showed how important it was for her to examine it carefully before drawing it.

O'Keeffe did look at it closely, but she did a lot more than that. She turned it in different directions, drawing it over and over again. Then she tried drawing just a part of it, to see what that would look like. Every time she drew it, she made the shape of the flower look more simple. Someone looking at her drawing might not have recognized the flower at all. That didn't matter to Georgia O'Keeffe. To her, just to copy the flower was dull. In her drawings, a flower became a world to be explored. After she'd been painting for a few years, O'Keeffe realized that she'd begun copying other artists. But she still didn't see things the same way they did, so her paintings disappointed her. Then she remembered what she'd learned in her high school art class. For the rest of her life, she was determined to paint what she saw in her own way. Because her way was so unusual, her artwork sometimes startles us. That would please Georgia O'Keeffe, because that's what she wanted to happen.

She said she wanted people to be "surprised into taking time to look to see what I see of flowers." Can you see her point of view? COULD YOU GUESS THAT Georgia O'Keeffe disliked it when people called her a "woman artist"? She didn't think that being a woman should matter to her art. She wanted to be thought of only as "an artist." she drew cartoons of her teachers for her high school yearbook? She was the art editor, and her classmates put this rhyme under her picture: O is for O'Keeffe; an artist divine Her paintings are perfect and her drawings are fine. in 1977, Georgia O'Keeffe received the U.S. Medal of Freedom? This is the highest honor our government gives to a civilian. she didn't sign her paintings? She didn't think she had toshe thought people would be able to tell they were hers because of what she painted and how she painted it. Do you think you could recognize one of her paintings? Georgia O'Keeffe lived and painted on her ranch in New Mexico until she was almost one hundred years old? Where else in this book have you seen art from the Southwest?

Georgia O'Keeffe

Question: For what did Georgie O'Keefe become famous?
Answer: Painting