Georgia O’Keeffe American Icon "When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else."
Georgia O'Keeffe (1887 – 1986) was and is considered one of the greatest female artists of the 20th century. Best known for her still-life paintings, O'Keeffe carved her niche early on with the help of Alfred Stieglitz and his Gallery 291. She painted natural settings at their most basic; large-scale flowers, bones and landscapes.
O'Keeffe played a pivotal role in the development of American modernism and its relationship to European avante garde movements of the early twentieth century. Producing a substantial body of work over seven decades, she sought to capture the emotion and power of objects through abstracting the natural world
O'Keeffe captured the raw brilliance of nature that only she could see and exposed us to its beauty.
Her technical contributions include use of intense color, linear precision and experimentation with the scale of objects, as well as maintaining a simplified quality and formal balance in her compositions.
O'Keeffe incorporated the techniques of other artists and was especially influenced by Paul Strand's use of cropping in his photographs; she was one of the first artists to adapt the method to painting by rendering close-ups of uniquely American objects that were highly detailed yet abstract.
Through intense observation of nature, experimentation with scale, and nuanced use of line and color, O'Keeffe's art remained grounded in representation even while pushing at its limits. From the 1940s through the 1960s in particular, O'Keeffe's art was outside the mainstream as she was one of the few artists to adhere to representation in a period when others were exploring non- representation or had abandoned painting altogether.
She worked in series, synthesizing abstraction and realism to produce works that emphasized the primary forms of nature. While some of these works are highly detailed, in others, she stripped away what she considered the inessential to focus on shape and color.
She is notable for her role as a pioneering female artist, and although she disavowed their interpretation of her work, she was a strong influence on the artists of the Feminist art movement, including Judy Chicago and Miriam Shapiro, who saw feminine imagery in O'Keeffe's flower paintings.
A prolific artist, she produced more than 2000 works over the course of her career. The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe is the first museum in the United States dedicated to a female artist, and its research center sponsors significant fellowships for scholars of modern American art.
Georgia O'Keeffe spent 70 years making art and contributing to the development of American modernism. "I have but one desire as a painter - that is to paint what I see, as I see it, in my own way, without regard for the desires or taste of the professional dealer or the professional collector. I attribute what little success I have to this fact. I wouldn't turn out stuff for order, and I couldn't. It would stifle any creative ability I possess."
Recommend
More recommend
