Georgia O'Keeffe

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).

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.