Georgia O'Keeffe
1887-1986
Georgia O'Keeffe was born in 1887 near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Her professional training began in 1905 with study at the Art Institute of Chicago and continued at the Art Students League in New York in 1907, where she studied with William Merritt Chase.
Between 1908 and 1912, O'Keeffe worked in commercial art. In the autumn of 1912, she became the supervisor of art in the public schools in Amarillo, Texas. After two years, with summers spent teaching at the University of Virginia, O'Keeffe left to study with Arthur Wesley Dow at the Teachers' College of Columbia University.
The year 1915 changed her life. She had taken a new teaching position at Columbia College in South Carolina, and her artistic style was becoming uniquely her own. She sent several charcoal drawings to her friend Anita Pollitzer in New York. Anita promptly took them to Alfred Stieglitz, even though O'Keeffe had told her not to show them to anyone. Stieglitz was impressed and decided to exhibit them, declaring, "Finally, a woman on paper!"
O'Keeffe's first one-person show was held in May 1917 at Stieglitz's 291. O'Keeffe held two major exhibitions at Anderson Galleries in 1923 and 1924. The first of yearly exhibitions at Stieglitz's Intimate Gallery were held in 1926, the year of her first paintings of New York City. Summers in the 1920's were spent painting at Lake George until 1929, when O'Keeffe made her first summer trip to New Mexico. Stieglitz continued to exhibit her work at An American Place in New York until his death in 1946. Other exhibits were held during these years including retrospectives at the Art Institute of Chicago (1943) and the Museum of Modern Art (1946).
By the 1950's, O'Keeffe's permanent home was Abiquiu, New Mexico, although travel to many parts of the world occupied much of her time. She was intrigued with what she has called the Southwest's "wonderful emptiness." Indeed the Northern New Mexican landscape has become synonymous with O'Keeffe and her work. In 1997 the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum opened in Santa Fe, the only museum in the country devoted solely to the work of a woman.
Georgia O'Keeffe was honored in her lifetime with many recognitions of her art and achievements. Awards include election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1963), Brandeis University Creative Arts Award (1963), election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1966), National Institute of Arts, Letters Gold Medal for Painting (1970) and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977).
Actively seeking works by Georgia O'Keeffe.
