O'Keeffe, Georgia (1887-1986)

US painter. One of the best known US painters of the 20th century, O'Keefe is known chiefly for her large, semi-abstract studies of flowers, bones, and other imagery, such as Black Iris (1926; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). Although painting representational subjects, her strong lines, geometric forms, and flat planes sometimes verge on abstraction, as in Jack-in-the-Pulpit (1930; collection of Georgia O'Keeffe).

O'Keeffe worked frequently in series or multiples such as the Pelvis Series of the 1940s, stretching the objects across the canvas and depicting them as if viewed from a close-up camera lens. O'Keefe was considered a Precisionist or cubist-realist (an art movement derived from cubism, where the underlying structures of objects were depicted in straight lines and flat colours). However, her work is now seen to be far more personal and natural than that of others in the group. She was married 1924-46 to photographer and art exhibitor Alfred Stieglitz, in whose gallery her work was first shown.

Born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O'Keeffe had a passion for art throughout her childhood. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago 1905-06, and at the Art Students League in New York 1907-08. For many years she worked in various locations as an art teacher, including Texas and South Carolina. She gave up creating her own art for about four years, but her interest was rekindled at a teachers' summer class led by artist Arthur Wesley Dow. Dow had a tremendous influence on O'Keeffe, and by 1916 her work had been discovered by Stieglitz, and was being exhibited in his ‘291’ gallery in New York City. In 1918 O'Keeffe moved to New York City. Stieglitz remained the biggest supporter and promoter of her work until his death in 1946.

In the mid-1920s O'Keeffe began to paint her famous series of large-scale flowers. She reduced the natural objects to their most simple forms, lines, and shapes. By using light, shadow, and expressive colour, she captured not only the beauty inherent in the object itself, but imbued the work with her own emotion and personal expression. Paintings such as Red Poppy (1928; private collection) were inspired by O'Keeffe's belief that city people rush around too much, and never have time to look at a flower; by making enormous paintings, she assumed that people would have no choice but to see them. In 1928 one of her flower paintings sold for $28,000, making her the first woman in the USA to earn a successful living as a painter. Around 1925 she began to paint the landscape of New York City, much in the same style as her flowers. Paintings such as Shelton Hotel, New York No.1 (1926; Kennedy Galleries, New York) now hang in art institutions all over the world.

In 1929 O'Keeffe spent the summer in New Mexico. She instantly fell in love with the landscape, the light, and the natural beauty. She returned to New Mexico every summer until she settled there permanently at her Ghost Ranch house in 1949. O'Keeffe's mature style stressed contours and subtle tonal transitions, which often transformed the subject into a powerful and sensual abstract image. Her work in New Mexico was inspired by the landscape, and the natural objects, such as animal skulls and bones, that decorated the desert. Paintings such as Ram's Head with Hollyhock (1930), Cow's Skull - Red, White and Blue, and Horse's Skull on Blue (1930) are all characteristic of her work from New Mexico. In 1962 O'Keeffe was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She stopped painting in her mid-70s when her eyesight began to fail, and turned to creating pottery for the remainder of her life.

The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum was opened in Santa Fé, New Mexico, in 1997. One of the largest collection of her works in the USA is housed in the Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.