One of the most important American artists of the twentieth century, Georgia O’Keeffe, (1887-1986) born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, was the heart of Alfred Steiglitz’s circle in New York by 1907. In 1924, she married Steiglitz, a famous photographer, who was twenty years her elder. O’Keefe began working on abstract florals and other natural forms. In a tropical excessively large size, her flowers seem to transcend being pretty. In fact, she once stated,” You write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower and I don’t.” In 1929, O’Keefe visited New Mexico, where she eventually moved. Her later subject matter seems to be diametrically opposed to her earlier paintings. She began painting sun-bleached animal skulls and desert landscapes that seem to be the reverse of the flowers–the husks that life leaves behind, and the arid terrain where life, impossibly, survives.
“Poppies” which was painted in 1950, is one of the most famous of her flower paintings and resides in the Milwaukee Art Museum.
O’Keeffe is the “mother of American modernism” and her artwork and personal items can be viewed at her museum in Sante Fe, New Mexico, where she lived and painted for most of her life. The museum is dedicated to the life, art and legacy of Georgia O’Keeffe.