Georgia O'Keeffe, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Modern Art, 1887~1986

Georgia O'Keeffe, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Modern Art, 1887~1986

Georgia O'Keeffe, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Modern Art, 1887~1986

Georgia O'Keeffe, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Modern Art, 1887~1986

Georgia O'Keeffe, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Modern Art, 1887~1986

Georgia O'Keeffe, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Modern Art, 1887~1986

Georgia O'Keeffe, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Modern Art, 1887~1986

Georgia O'Keeffe, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Modern Art, 1887~1986

Georgia O'Keeffe, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Modern Art, 1887~1986

Georgia O'Keeffe, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Modern Art, 1887~1986

Georgia O'Keeffe, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Modern Art, 1887~1986

 

Georgia O'Keeffe, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Modern Art, 1887~1986

 

One of the most important artists of the 20th century known for her contribution to modern art is Georgia O'Keeffe. Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was raised on a farm in the vicinity of Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, where she was born on November 15, 1887, the second of seven children. O'Keeffe had already made up her mind to become an artist by the time she received her high school diploma in 1905. She obtained her education in traditional painting methods at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York. When she researched the ground-breaking theories of Arthur Wesley Dow four years later, her artistic technique underwent a significant change. Dow provided O'Keeffe with a different perspective on art than what was generally accepted. While teaching art in West Texas for two years, she explored with abstraction. She created a personal language through a series of abstract charcoal drawings to more effectively communicate her thoughts and feelings. 

 

Some of these incredibly abstract drawings were sent by mail by O'Keeffe to a friend in New York City. The well-known photographer and art dealer Alfred Stieglitz, who would eventually marry O'Keeffe, was introduced to them by her acquaintance. In 1916, he opened the first exhibition of her work.

 

By the middle of the 1920s, O'Keeffe was acknowledged as one of the most significant and prosperous artists in America. She is most known for her paintings of New York skyscrapers, a symbol of modernism that is uniquely American, as well as her equally avant-garde portrayals of flowers.

 

O'Keeffe made the first of many excursions to northern New Mexico in the summer of 1929. O'Keeffe's painting took on a new direction as a result of the region's austere terrain and Native American and Hispanic cultures. She lived and worked in New Mexico most summers for the following 20 years. Three years after Stieglitz's passing, in 1949, she moved permanently there.

 

O'Keeffe's New Mexico paintings appeared at a time when American Modernists looking for a unique perspective on the country were becoming more interested in regional landscapes. O'Keeffe started traveling abroad in the 1950s. She created paintings and sketches that depict the breathtaking locations she visited, such as Peru's high peaks and Japan's Mount Fuji. At the age of 73, she shifted her focus to aerial photographs of the sky and clouds. O'Keeffe created her final oil painting without the aid of a paintbrush in 1972 due to macular degeneration and fading vision. O'Keeffe's desire to create, however, did not suffer from her vision loss. I can see what I wish to paint, she said in 1977, at the age of 90. It's still there what inspires you to create. She solicited the aid of multiple assistants in her later years and when she was nearly blind in order to continue making work. She leaned on her creative imagination as well as her favorite motifs from memory for these pieces. On March 6, 1986, Georgia O'Keeffe passed away in Santa Fe at the age of 98.

 

For many years, Georgia O'Keeffe has been a well-known artist in the United States. Her painting has recently started to gain similar recognition and praise elsewhere. Nearly 150 paintings and hundreds of works on paper (pastel, watercolor, pencil, and charcoal drawings) are included in the holdings of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. The collections also comprise a sizeable archive of records and images pertaining to the artist's life and times, as well as personal items like pebbles, bones, gowns, and paintbrushes.

---

 

Otto Mueller, Germany, Artist, Expressionism, 1874~1930

 

Chrystal Giam, Malaysia, Visual designer and illustrator, Present

 

Frederick Carl Frieseke, Owosso, Michigan, American, 1874~1939