Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) was an American painter. Among the first generation of American modernists, she is celebrated for her characteristic iconography that embraces startling details of plant forms, bleached bones, and panoramas of the New Mexico desert—all rendered with immaculate precision.
Born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O’Keeffe studied at the Art Institute of Chicago 1905–06 and at the Art Students’ League in New York City 1907–08, where she met photographer Alfred Stieglitz, whom she married in 1924.
As early as 1915, O’Keeffe initiated abstract art in the USA (e.g., Blue and Green Music, 1919) but later moved towards a more figurative style, painting flowers, and architectural subjects, often with a surrealist flavor.
After her husband’s death in 1946, O’Keeffe lived in New Mexico from 1949 but toured extensively in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East in the 1950s and 1960s.
Many of O’Keeffe’s works found a permanent home among the abode buildings of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Since 1997, the Georgia O’Keefe Museum in Santa Fe holds more of her pastels, drawings, paintings, and sculptures than does any other museum.
O’Keeffe has remained one of the most critical and revered modernist painters in the United States and one of its most celebrated icons. Biographies include Laurie Lisle’s Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O’Keeffe (1987) and Roxana Robinson’s Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life (1989.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Georgia O’Keeffe
Nobody sees a flower—really—it is so small it takes time—we haven’t time—and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.
—Georgia O’Keeffe
Topics: Body, Friend
Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression. It is so spontaneous. And after singing, I think the violin. Since I cannot sing, I paint.
—Georgia O’Keeffe
Topics: Singing, The Artist
Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest.
—Georgia O’Keeffe
Topics: Success & Failure, Achievement
I hate flowers—I paint them because they’re cheaper than models and they don’t move.
—Georgia O’Keeffe
Topics: Flowers
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. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.
—Georgia O’Keeffe
Topics: Flowers
The days you work are the best days
—Georgia O’Keeffe
Topics: Work
I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me—shapes and ideas so near to me—so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn’t occurred to me to put them down.
—Georgia O’Keeffe
Topics: Thinking
I have already settled it for myself, so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.
—Georgia O’Keeffe
Topics: Criticism
I’ve been afraid every single day of my life, but I’ve gone ahead and done it anyway.
—Georgia O’Keeffe
Topics: Sin, Life
One can not be an American by going about saying that one is an American. It is necessary to feel America, like America, love America and then work.
—Georgia O’Keeffe
Topics: America
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Hans Hofmann American Painter
Edward Hopper American Painter
Marc Chagall French Painter, Graphic Artist
Duke Ellington American Musician
B. B. King American Blues Musician
Hyman G. Rickover American Admiral
Brooke Astor American Writer, Philanthropist
Viggo Mortensen Danish American Actor
Sandra Day O’Connor American Jurist
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi Hungarian-American Biochemist