Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O'Keeffe first met Alfred Stieglitz, a famed photographer and gallery owner, in 1908 but they did not correspond with each other until after a few years in the mid-1910s. Stieglitz was 23 years senior to her and married, yet they became involved in a romantic relationship. Stieglitz divorced his wife and married O’Keeffe in 1924.

Georgia O’Keeffe was completely devoted to her profession and continued painting independently for as long as she could. Her eyesight started failing during her later years and she had to take the help of assistants to aid her in painting. She died on March 6, 1986, at the age of 98.

Lifetime Television produced a biopic of Georgia O'Keeffe starring Joan Allen as O’Keeffe which premiered in 2009.

Georgia O'Keeffe was born on November 15, 1887, to Francis Calyxtus O'Keeffe and Ida as the second of their seven children. Her parents were dairy farmers and had a farm near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin.

She loved art from a young age and her parents arranged for her to receive lessons from a local artist. She received her education from different schools and graduated from Chatham Episcopal Institute in Virginia in 1905. She was a member of the Kappa Delta sorority.

She studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1905 to 1906 before moving on to the Art Students League in New York City. There she studied under William Merritt Chase and received a scholarship to attend the League's outdoor summer school in Lake George, New York.

Georgia O'Keeffe became disillusioned with the idea of becoming an artist after completing her studies and took up a job as a commercial artist instead in 1908. After not painting for four years, she was motivated to paint again in 1912 after attending a class at the University of Virginia Summer School. There she learned about the innovative ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow which inspired her to take up the brush again.

For the next two years from 1912–14, she taught art in the public schools in Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle. In 1914, she started attending Teachers College of Columbia University and took classes from Dow who would prove to be a great influence on O’Keeffe’s art.

In 1915 she continued teaching and also started creating artworks of her own, completing a series of highly innovative charcoal abstractions. She mailed some of her abstract drawings to a friend in New York City who showed them to Alfred Stieglitz, a prominent art dealer and famous photographer.

Stieglitz liked the paintings very much and exhibited ten of her drawings at his gallery, 291, in 1916. The next year he organized O'Keeffe's first solo show at 291, which included oil paintings and watercolors completed in Texas. By 1918, he had convinced O’Keeffe to move to New York to devote all of her time to her work.

Stieglitz and O’Keeffe began a personal relationship and got married. He had a great influence on her art as she was highly inspired by Stieglitz’s photography. She completed many significant paintings during the 1920s including ‘Petunia, No. 2’ (1924), ‘City Night and New York—Night’ (1926) and ‘Radiator Bldg—Night, New York’ (1927). By the mid-1920s, she had become known as one of the most important American artists.

Georgia O'Keeffe’s painting ‘Summer Days’, featuring a deer’s skull adorned with various wildflowers, against a desert background, is one of her most famous works. A similar painting, ‘Ram’s Head, Blue Morning Glory’ which depicts a ram’s skull and a blue morning glory placed side by side is also a popular painting of hers.