Georgia O'Keeffe : Fantastical Dream
Georgia O'Keeffe was an American abstract painter,
famous for the purity and lucidity of her still-life compositions.
O'Keeffe was born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, and studied at the school
of the Art Institute of Chicago and at the Art Students League of New York.
She taught art in Texas from 1913 to 1918. In 1916 the American photographer
and art gallery director Alfred Stieglitz (whom she married in 1924) became
interested in her abstract drawings and exhibited them at “291,”
his gallery in New York City; her work was shown annually in Stieglitz's
galleries until his death in 1946 and was widely exhibited in other
important institutions. O'Keeffe, who moved to New Mexico in 1949,
is best known for her large paintings of desert flowers and scenery,
in which single blossoms or objects such as a cow's skull are presented
in close-up views. Although O'Keeffe handles her subject matter
representationally, the starkly linear quality, the thin, clear coloring,
and the boldly patterned compositions produce abstract designs.
A number of her works have an abstracted effect, the flower paintings in
particular?such as Black Iris (1926, Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York City)?in which the details of the flower are so enlarged that
they become unfamiliar and surprising. In the 1960s, inspired by a series
of airplane flights, O'Keeffe introduced motifs of sky and clouds,
as seen from the air, into her paintings. One of her largest works is
the mural Sky above Clouds (1965, collection of the artist),
which is 7.3 m (24 ft) wide. O'Keeffe's paintings hang in museums and
private collections throughout the United States.
Pink dish and Green Leaves, 1928
Light iris, 1924
Two Calla Lillies on pink, 1928
White iris, 1926
White Flower, 1929
Music, Pink, and Blue, 1919
Black iris, 1926
Grey line with black, blue and yellow, 1923
jack in the Pulpit, 1930
Evening star, 1927
Blue, Black and Grey, 1960
The Shelton with sunspots, 1926
Cow's skull with cailico Roses, 1932
Summer Days, 1936
Deer's skull with pedernal, 1936
Small purple Hills, 1934
Ranchos church, New Mexico
Black Mesa Landscape
Black place Green, 1949
Turkey Feathers and Indian pot, 1941
Black cross, 1929
The Lawrence Tree
The patio, 1940
Sky above white clouds, 1962
♬ Ships/Wayne Gratz
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