Georgia O'Keeffe was born on November 15, 1887 in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin and her family moved to Virginia when she was sixteen. She knew early in life that she was going to become an artist as she began taking art lessons at home as a child. O'Keeffe was educated at Chatham Protestant Episcopal Institute in Williamsburg, Virginia, Art Institute of Chicago and Art Students League in New York. Durin
...see more »g her early career she held positions as a commercial artist in Chicago, a drawing supervisor in Amarillo, Texas, and teaching assignments at the University of Virginia and Columbia College in South Carolina. She then took a position as head of the art department at West Texas State Normal College.
O'Keeffe's first showing of paintings was held at Alfred Steiglitz' 291 studio in New York and her first solo exhibition was held in 1917. She returned to New York in 1918 to concentrate on her painting, while Alfred Steiglitz became her business manager, arranging exhibits and selling her paintings. The two married in 1924. During the twenties, O'Keeffe started painting her famous flowers, her corn series and paintings of the city. She also made her first trip to Taos, New Mexico, which was to become an important place in her life.
During the thirties, O'Keeffe's paintings received more and more critical acclaim, with museums and galleries, as well as private collectors, buying and/or showing her paintings. She began to spend summers in New Mexico with winters in Lake George, New York. Her paintings now included desert landscapes, with dry bones and crosses depicted from her summers in Taos. She stayed in Ghost Ranch, a New Mexico location that was frequented by other well-known people, Ansel Adams and D.H. Lawrence, among others; then purchased her home there in 1940. Steiglitz died in 1946, at which time O'Keeffe made New Mexico her permanent home.
After her husband's death, O'Keeffe began traveling to Mexico and Europe and eventually made trips all over the world. Upon her return she would start painting all the sights she had seen in her travels. Her eyesight started to fail her in the 1970's so she eventually stopped painting. But that was not the end of her career, as O'Keeffe then took up pottery. She published a book about her art and filmed a documentary at Ghost Ranch.
Georgia O'Keeffe won many artistic accolades during her long career, but the ones she considered the highest honors were: election to the fifty-member American Arts and Letters, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977; and the National Medal of Arts. Due to failing health, she moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico in her 90's and died there on March 6, 1986. O'Keeffe's art can be found in galleries and museums, private and corporate collections, the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum and through retailers around the world.
Partial listing of artwork:
Black Iris, 1926
Radiator Building - Night, New York, 1927
Near Abiquiu, New Mexico (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City), 1930
White Barn No 1 (Wright Ludington Collection, Santa Barbara, California), 1931
Blue and Green Music, 1919
Deer's Skull with Pedernal, 1931
Goats's Horns with Blue, 1945, Pastel
Special No.35, 1920, Watercolor
Alligator Pears, 1923, Pastel/paper
Flower/Black Valley, c.1944-1945, Pencil
Red and Blue No.I, 1916, Watercolor
Goat's Horns with Blue, 1945, Pastel
Flowers, 1923, Pastel
Woman with blue Hat, c.1916-1917, Gouache
Like an early blue Abstraction, 1977, Watercolor
Ghost Ranch Cliffs, 1952, Oil
The Patio No.1, 1940, Oil
Two dark Alligator Pears on Green, 1923, Oil
Red pepper, green Grapes, 1928, Oil
Trees Abiquiu IV, 1951, Oil
It was yellow & pink I, 1959, Oil
Another Place near Abiquiu, 1930, Oil
Taos, New Mexico, 1931, Oil
Mask with Golden Apple, Oil
Le Grand Arbre, Lithograph in colors
Patio Door, Abiquiu/The Patio, Abiquiu, c.1961, Gelatin silver print« see less
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