Georgia O’Keeffe

One of the most significant artists of the 20th century, Georgia O’Keeffe was a pioneering American modernist artist renowned for her distinctive paintings that captured the essence of the American Southwest, as well as her striking close-up depictions of flowers. Born in 1887 in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O’Keeffe attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and later the Art Students League of New York.

O’Keeffe developed a personal vocabulary of abstraction influenced by the principles of Arthur Wesley Dow, who emphasised the use of line, colour and shading to create harmony in art. This philosophy profoundly shaped O’Keeffe’s distinctive style, allowing her to create compositions that are simultaneously abstract and true to the natural world.

Georgia O’Keeffe’s most iconic subject is the flower — magnified to confront the viewer with femininity in its boldest, and often most provocative, form. O’Keeffe began painting her flower pictures in 1918, and they were exhibited for the first time by her dealer and future husband Alfred Stieglitz in 1923. They immediately caused a sensation. By 1927, the year she painted White Rose with Larkspur No. I which sold at Christie’s New York in 2022 for US$26,725,000, O’Keeffe was the most famous female artist in America.

O’Keeffe and Stieglitz first met in New York through a common friend who has shown Stieglitz some of O’Keeffe’s charcoal drawings Stieglitz, a prominent photographer and gallery owner, was captivated by O’Keeffe’s work and offered her a solo exhibition at his gallery, 291, in New York in 1916. This exhibition marked the beginning of a lifelong partnership, both personal and professional. Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe married in 1924, and he played a crucial role in promoting her career, showcasing her paintings in numerous exhibitions.

In additional to her flowers, the vastness and natural beauty of the American Southwest was a recurring and beloved subject in O’Keeffe’s oeuvre. Combining emotional response with meditation on form and colour, Georgia O’Keeffe uniquely infused her panoramic landscapes with a sense of spiritual wonder. While faithful to creating representative paintings of her surroundings, O’Keeffe distilled each scene to evoke a sense of mystery and unattainable beauty.

Georgia O’Keeffe died in 1898 in Sante Fe, New Mexico. Her works can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and more. Today, Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings continue to be celebrated for their innovative use of form and colour, and garner international attention in the auction market.