O'Keeffe, Georgia (ōkēf`), 1887–1986, American painter, b. Sun Prairie, Wis. After working briefly as a commercial artist in Chicago, O'Keeffe abandoned painting until she began the study of abstract design with A. W. Dow at Columbia Univ. Teachers College. Thereafter she taught art in Texas. Her work was first exhibited in 1916 at the 291 Gallery of Alfred Stieglitz Stieglitz, Alfred (stēg`lĭts), 1864–1946, American photographer, editor, and art exhibitor, b. Hoboken, N.J.
..... Click the link for more information. , whom she married in 1924. Immaculate, sculptural, organic forms painted in strong, clear colors predominate in her works. Living much of her life in New Mexico, O'Keeffe employed numerous Southwestern motifs such as bleached bones, barren, rolling hills, clouds, and desert blooms. Cow's Skull, Red, White, and Blue (1931; Metropolitan Mus.) is characteristic. Her pristine abstract designs carry strong elements of sexual symbolism—especially her flower paintings, her most personal works. Using a photographic close-up technique, she revealed the exquisite recesses of calla lilies, orchids, and hollyhocks. Her later works are more purely abstract. O'Keeffe is represented in a Santa Fe museum devoted to her works and in major museums nationwide.

Bibliography

See her collected drawings (1968), Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné (2 vol., 1999), ed. by B. B. Lynes; biographies by L. Lisle (1987), R. Robinson (1989), and H. Drohojowska-Philp (2004); J. Cowart et al., Georgia O'Keeffe: Art and Letters (1987).

O'Keeffe, Georgia

(born Nov. 15, 1887, near Sun Prairie, Wis., U.S.—died March 6, 1986, Santa Fe, N.M.) U.S. painter. She studied art in Chicago and New York City, where she met and married the photographer Alfred Stieglitz. By the early 1920s, her highly individualistic painting style had emerged, as typified by such works as Black Iris (1926). Her subjects were often enlarged views of the skulls and other bones of animals, flowers and plant organs, shells, rocks, mountains, and other natural forms. Her mysteriously suggestive images of bones and flowers set against a perspectiveless space have inspired a variety of erotic, psychological, and symbolic interpretations. Her later works celebrate the clear skies and desert landscapes of New Mexico, where she moved after her husband's death in 1946. She is regarded by critics as one of the most original and important American artists, and her works are highly popular among the general public.

O'Keeffe, Georgia (1887–1986) painter; born in Sun Prairie, Wis. By age 12 she was intent on being an artist. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago (1904–08) and the Art Students League, New York (1907–08), then taught in Texas (1912–18). Alfred Stieglitz was the first to promote her work; they married (1924) but spent increasingly less time together. While based in New York, she became famous for flower paintings such as Black Iris (1926), and cityscapes such as Radiator Building—Night, New York (1927). New Mexico, which she visited from 1929 on and where she settled in 1946, inspired the paintings that made her later reputation—stark abstractions from nature, like Deer's Skull with Pedernal (1931).