Georgia O’Keeffe Oil For Auction at 888 Auctions on Mar 12th, 2020

Georgia O’Keeffe

Born on November 15, 1887, Georgia O’Keeffe grew up on a farm in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, the 2nd of 7 children. She was able to study at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1905 – 1906. She then moved to New York from 1907 – 1908 to continue her studies at the Art Students League. Subsequently, O’Keeffe learned traditional realist painting from well-known artists William Merritt Chase, Kenyon Cox, and F. Luis Mora.  However, within a few years, she had shifted her focus to the revolutionary artistic ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow, where composition and design were emphasized. It was during this period which allowed O’Keeffe to experiment and eventually concentrate her focus on purer abstractions.

O’Keeffe’s works were noticed by a well known New York art dealer and photographer, Alfred Stieglitz. In 1916 he would be the first to exhibit her works. Their professional relationship became personal and eventually, they married. By the mid-1920s O’Keeffe had distinguished herself as being one of America’s most successful and significant artists of her time. Her ability to express abstractions to living and non-living forms became her hallmark; such pieces like the New York Skyscrapers and her many flowers paintings were iconic of her era.

In the late 1920’s she made many trips to New Mexico and produced many indigenous and regional artworks.  During the next 20 years, she lived and worked in New Mexico, and eventually made it her permanent home in 1949, three years after Stieglitz’s death.  Her New Mexico paintings of Adobe, indigenous themes and terrains helped shape distinctively new artistic scenes of America.

In the 1950s O’Keeffe traveled outside of America and painted the places she visited managing to evoke awe and wonder from the various mountainous and regional scenery. It was during this period she painted her iconic Sky Above Clouds piece.

At the ripe age of 85, O’Keeffe painted her last oil painting in 1972 unassisted due to her failing eyesight.  However, this did not deter her from still trying to create and imagine more paintings. In 1977 at 90, she declared, “I can see what I want to paint. The thing that makes you want to create is still there.”

In her twilight, almost blind, she managed to still create and paint with the help of several assistants, many more visual motifs emanating from her powerful and vivid memories and imaginations. Georgia O’Keeffe died in Santa Fe, on March 6, 1986, at the age of 98.