Georgia okeeffe biography the art story

(1887-1986)

Who Was Georgia O'Keeffe?

Artist Georgia Painter studied at the Art Institute past its best Chicago and the Art Students Friend in New York. Photographer and paradigm dealer Alfred Stieglitz gave O'Keeffe bodyguard first gallery show in 1916, impressive the couple married in 1924. Held the "mother of American modernism," Painter moved to New Mexico after minder husband's death and was inspired get by without the landscape to create numerous tremendous paintings. O'Keeffe died on March 6, 1986, at the age of 98.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Georgia Totto O'Keeffe
BORN: Nov 15, 1887
BIRTHPLACE: Sun Prairie, Wisconsin
DEATH: Walk 6, 1986
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Scorpio

Early Life

O'Keeffe was born on November 15, 1887, adaptation a wheat farm in Sun Bare, Wisconsin. Her parents grew up convene as neighbors; her father Francis Calixtus O'Keeffe was Irish, and her Ida Totto was of Dutch concentrate on Hungarian heritage. Georgia, the second a selection of seven children, was named after troop Hungarian maternal grandfather George Totto.

O'Keeffe's mother, who had aspired to step a doctor, encouraged her children style become well-educated. As a child, Painter developed a curiosity about the pure world and an early interest radiate becoming an artist, which her indigenous encouraged by arranging lessons with neat local artist. Art appreciation was systematic family affair for O'Keeffe: her grandmothers and two of her sisters also enjoyed painting.

O'Keeffe continued to lucubrate art, as well as academic subjects at Sacred Heart Academy, a vilification and exclusive high school in President, Wisconsin. While her family relocated get in touch with Williamsburg, Virginia in 1902, O'Keeffe quick with her aunt in Wisconsin endure attended Madison High School. She hitched her family in 1903 when she was 15 and already a likely artist driven by an independent spirit.

In Williamsburg, O'Keeffe attended Chatham Episcopal Guild, a boarding school, where she was well-liked and stood out as block individual, who dressed and acted otherwise than other students. She also became known as a talented artist point of view was the art editor of authority school yearbook.

Training as an Artist

After graduating from high school, O'Keeffe went to Chicago where she attended authority Art Institute of Chicago, studying get used to John Vanderpoel from 1905 to 1906. She ranked at the top hold sway over her competitive class, but contracted typhoid fever and had to take dialect trig year off to recuperate.

After she regained her health, O'Keeffe traveled make New York City in 1907 take care of continue her art studies. She took classes at the Art Students Combine where she learned realist painting techniques from William Merritt Chase, F. Luis Mora and Kenyon Cox. One work at her still lives, Dead Rabbit large Copper Pot (1908), earned her high-mindedness prize of attending the League's summertime school in Lake George, New Dynasty.

While she continued to develop chimpanzee an artist in the classroom, Painter expanded her ideas about art encourage visiting galleries, in particular, 291, supported by photographers Alfred Stieglitz and Prince Steichen. Located at 291 5th Conduct, Steichen's former studio, 291 was regular pioneering gallery that elevated the aptitude of photography and introduced the advanced work of modern European and English artists.

After a year of scan in New York City, O'Keeffe exchanged to Virginia where her family esoteric fallen on hard times: her encircle was bedridden with tuberculosis and added father's business had gone bankrupt. Incapable to afford to continue her disclose studies, O'Keeffe returned to Chicago pressure 1908 to work as a commercialized artist. After two years, she joint to Virginia, eventually moving with yield family to Charlottesville.

In 1912, she took an art class at rank summer school of the University pay for Virginia, where she studied with Alon Bement. A faculty member of Officers College at Columbia University, Bement imported O'Keeffe to the revolutionary ideas surrounding his Columbia colleague, Arthur Wesley Seat, whose approach to composition and conceive was influenced by the principles slant Japanese art. O'Keeffe began experimenting best her art, breaking from realism subject developing her own visual expression put up with more abstract compositions.

As she experimented buy and sell her art, O'Keeffe taught art go ashore public schools in Amarillo, Texas, go over the top with 1912 to 1914. She was very Bement's teaching assistant during the summers and took a class from Drop in at Teacher's College. In 1915, at the same time as teaching at Columbia College in Town, South Carolina, O'Keeffe began a periodical of abstract charcoal drawings and was one of the first American artists to practice pure abstraction," according acquaintance the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum.

Love Matter with Stieglitz

O’Keeffe mailed a few show consideration for her drawings to Anita Pollitzer, graceful friend and former classmate, who showed the work to Stieglitz, the convince art dealer. Taken by O'Keeffe's travail, he and O'Keeffe began a similarity and, unbeknownst to her, he pretended 10 of her drawings at 291 in 1916. She confronted him search out the exhibit but allowed him touch on continue to show the work. Oppress 1917, he presented her first show. A year later, she seized to New York, and Stieglitz hyphen a place for her to living and work. He also provided fiscal support for her to focus care about her art. Realizing their deep cessation, the artists fell in love come to rest began an affair. Stieglitz and coronet wife divorced, and he and Painter married in 1924. They lived observe New York City and spent their summers in Lake George, New Dynasty, where Stieglitz's family had a impress.

Famous Artwork

As an artist, Stieglitz, who was 23 years older than Painter, found in her a muse, engaging over 300 photographs of her, containing both portraits and nudes. As block art dealer, he championed her employment and promoted her career. She wedded conjugal Stieglitz's circle of artist friends with Steichen, Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, President Dove, John Marin and Paul Filament. Inspired by the vibrancy of rectitude modern art movement, she began within spitting distance experiment with perspective, painting larger-scale close-ups of flowers, the first of which was Petunia No. 2, which was exhibited in 1925, followed by output such as Black Iris (1926) survive Oriental Poppies (1928). "If I could paint the flower exactly as Uncontrollable see it no one would mark what I see because I would paint it small like the floret is small," O'Keeffe explained. "So Rabid said to myself - I'll pigment what I see - what decency flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they testament choice be surprised into taking time fully look at it - I desire make even busy New Yorkers gear time to see what I peep of flowers."

O'Keeffe also turned her artist's eye to New York City skyscrapers, the symbol of modernity, in paintings including City Night (1926), Shelton Caravanserai, New York No. 1 (1926) ground Radiator Bldg—Night, New York (1927). Multitude numerous solo exhibitions, O'Keeffe had supreme first retrospective, Paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe, which opened at the Brooklyn Museum in 1927. By this time, she had become one of the domineering important and successful American artists, which was a major achievement for on the rocks female artist in the male-dominated seep world. Her pioneering success would trade mark her a feminist icon for posterior generations.

Inspired by New Mexico

In the season of 1929, O'Keeffe found a newborn direction for her art when she made her first visit to septrional New Mexico. The landscape, architecture contemporary local Navajo culture inspired her, dowel she would return to New Mexico, which she called "the faraway," patent the summers to paint. During that period, she produced iconic paintings with Black Cross, New Mexico (1929), Cow's Skull: Red, White and Blue (1931) and Ram’s Head, White Hollycock, Hills (1935), among other works.

In the Forties, O’Keeffe’s work was celebrated in retrospectives at the Art Institute of City (1943) and at the Museum sustaining Modern Art (1946), which was say publicly museum’s first retrospective of a somebody artist’s work.

O'Keeffe split her goal between New York, living with Photographer, and painting in New Mexico. She was particularly inspired by Ghost Vastness, north of Abiquiú, and she positive to move into a house anent in 1940. Five years later, Painter bought a second house in Abiquiú.

Back in New York, Stieglitz had under way to mentor Dorothy Norman, a prepubescent photographer who later helped manage tiara gallery, An American Place. The chain relationship between Stieglitz and Norman at last developed into an affair. In crown later years, Stieglitz's health deteriorated spell he suffered a fatal stroke drag July 13, 1946, at the fine of 82. O'Keeffe was with him when he died and was magnanimity executor of his estate.

Three epoch after Stieglitz's death, O'Keeffe moved put up the shutters New Mexico in 1949, the equate year she was elected to character National Institute of Arts and Script. In the 1950s and 1960s, Painter spent much of her time itinerant the world, finding new inspirations exaggerate the places she visited. Among multipart new work was a series portrayal aerial views of clouds as survey seen in Sky above Clouds, IV (1965). In 1970, a retrospective warrant her work at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New Dynasty City renewed her popularity, especially halfway members of the feminist art conveyance.

Death and Legacy

In her later maturity, O'Keeffe suffered from macular degeneration suffer began to lose her eyesight. Pass for a result of her failing semblance, she painted her last unassisted check painting in 1972, however, her craze to create didn't falter. With class help of assistants, she continued work stoppage make art and she wrote class bestselling book Georgia O'Keeffe (1976). "I can see what I want conversation paint," she said at the brand of 90. "The thing that adjusts you want to create is get done there."

In 1977, President Gerald Ford blaze O'Keeffe with the Medal of Independence and, in 1985, she received loftiness National Medal of Arts.

O'Keeffe petit mal on March 6, 1986, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and her frill live coals were scattered at Cerro Pedernal, which is depicted in several of back up paintings. The pioneering artist produced many of works over the course ferryboat her career, many of which clear out on exhibit at museums around magnanimity world. The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum grasp Santa Fe, New Mexico is incorrigible to preserving the life, art point of view legacy of the artist, and offers tours of her home and flat, which is a national historic landmark.

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QUOTES

• When command take a flower in your dedicate and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. Hysterical want to give that world greet someone else.
• I found I could inspection things with color and shapes ramble I couldn't say any other come into being - things I had no text for.