Georgia O'Keeffe was a famous American artist best known for her paintings of flowers and her paintings inspired by the terrain of northern New Mexico.
Biography
Georgia O'Keeffe was born on Nov. 15, 1887. She first exhibited her artwork in New York in 1916. O'Keeffe married famed photographer Alfred Stieglitz in 1924. They lived and worked in New York. In 1949, O'Keeffe moved to New Mexico. She died in 1986.
Location
Georgia O'Keeffe's location had an effect on her art. When she lived in New York, the hard-edged forms of the city architecture inspired her abstract paintings and drawings. Attracted by the desert landscape, O'Keeffe began traveling to New Mexico to paint in 1929.
Subject Matter
Just as O'Keeffe's artwork from New York depicts skyscrapers, her paintings from New Mexico depict the desert landscape, rocks and animal bones. O'Keeffe made many paintings of flowers at the same time as she was painting skyscrapers.
Media
O'Keeffe primarily created two-dimensional works. Throughout her long career she painted on canvas, Masonite panel and paper. Her first exhibited works were charcoal drawings. In the mid-1970s, O'Keeffe began making pencil and watercolor works as well as clay sculptures.
Style
Georgia O'Keeffe was a modernist painter whose work is a blend of abstraction and representation. Some paintings depict natural objects, such as flowers and shells, at such close range that they almost seem completely abstract.
