Georgia O’Keeffe
Born – Sun Prairie, USA 1887
Died – Santa Fe, USA 1986
Georgia O’Keeffe was one of the pioneers of modernism in the USA. She was part of a group of artists associated with Alfred Stieglitz, an American Photographer and art dealer, who imported avant-garde European art into the USA at the beginning of the twentieth century. She married Stieglitz in 1924. In the 1920s she made a series of precise, clearly defined paintings featuring the skyscrapers of her native New York. With its clinical interest in the rhythm of geometric structures, and the lack of any human interest or social comment, her work was defined by a new term, “Precisionist”. Throughout her career, O’Keeffe moved effortlessly in and out of abstraction. Indeed, there is no real distinction between her abstract and figurative works – both feature enlarged, simplified, sculptural forms often derived from nature. From the 1930s, she spent each winter in New Mexico where she painted the desert landscape. Cow’s Skull with Calico Roses features a surreal juxtaposition of dry, bleached bones and flowers. The clear-cut realism of the folds and crevices, swelling forms and hidden hollows allows for a powerful, sexual interpretation.
Masterpieces:
- Black Iris
- The Mountain, New Mexico
Text: The A-Z of Art, Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson.
Books About georgia o keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe's Hawai'i
Patricia Jennings
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Georgia O'Keeffe (Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists)
Mike Venezia
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Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe
Laurie Lisle
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