Biography

Georgia O’Keeffe – National Gallery of Art

Who is georgia o’keeffe

Georgia O’Keeffe was born on November 15, 1887 on a farm in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. he demonstrated an early aptitude for art and decided to become an artist. After graduating from high school in 1905, O’Keeffe attended the Art Institute of Chicago from 1905 to 1906, and the Art Students League in New York from 1907 to 1908. Although O’Keeffe won the persecution of William Merritt of the league still-life award in 1908, he became disillusioned with academic realism. in 1912 she took a summer course for art teachers at the university of virginia, charlottesville, with an instructor who introduced her to the progressive ideas of arthur wesley dow (american, 1857 – 1922) o’keeffe experimented with these concepts while teaching art In the public school system in Amarillo, Texas, from 1912 to 1914. He returned to New York and took courses at Columbia Teacher College during the 1914-1915 academic year, and then began teaching art at Columbia College in South Carolina. He produced a series of groundbreaking abstract charcoal drawings that attracted the attention of photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864 – 1946) who exhibited them at his Gallery 291 in 1916. The following year he gave a solo show to O’Keeffe, and In 1918, he provided financial support that enabled him to leave his post at West Texas State Normal University in Canyon, Texas, and move to New York. she and stieglitz began living together shortly thereafter.

The relationship between Stieglitz and O’Keeffe profoundly affected the course of their professional and personal lives. in march 1924 stieglitz organized major exhibitions of his photographs and paintings by him and works on paper by o’keeffe to be shown simultaneously at the anderson galleries. That same year, Stieglitz divorced his wife, Emmeline de El, and shortly thereafter married O’Keeffe. They lived in New York City and summered at his family’s home in Lake George, New York. Until his death in 1946, Stieglitz ardently promoted O’Keeffe and held annual exhibitions of his work at his galleries. By the late 1920s, her depictions of New York skyscrapers and large close-up views of flowers earned her recognition as one of the foremost American artists of the day. Although O’Keeffe was not associated with any particular art movement beyond her affiliation with the Stieglitz circle, her work can be linked to Surrealism, Regionalism, and Precisionism.

O’Keeffe first visited New Mexico during the summer of 1929 and was deeply inspired by its people, landscape, architecture, and the animal bones and other natural memorabilia she found in the desert, which took a place featured in his paintings. She moved there permanently in 1949, dividing her time between the ghost ranch, which she had bought in 1940, and an adobe house that she bought in Abiquiú in 1945. O’Keeffe’s fame continued to grow. In 1970, a major retrospective of her work was held at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and her illustrated autobiography Georgia O’Keeffe (1976) was a bestseller. In 1977 she received the Medal of Freedom from President Gerald Ford, and in 1985 the Medal of Arts from President Ronald Reagan. in 1984, a fault in her eyesight forced her to retire. O’Keeffe died in Santa Fe on March 6, 1986, at the age of 98. The National Gallery organized an exhibition in 1987 to celebrate the centenary of her birth.

robert torchia

September 29, 2016

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