Georgia o'keeffe family

Who is Georgia O'Keeffe?

Who is she and what is she famous for?

Born in 1887, Georgia O'Keeffe was an American artist who painted nature in a way that showed how it made her feel. She is best known for her paintings of flowers and desert landscapes.

She played an important part in the development of modern art in America, becoming the first female painter to gain respect in New York's art world in the 1920s. Her unique and new way of painting nature, simplifying its shapes and forms meant that she was called a pioneer.

What inspired her?

The artwork below is a landscape. Can you see how she has simplified the shapes of the hills in the painting?

As well as the shapes of the landscape itself, O'Keeffe was fascinated by the bones and skulls she found in the desert landscapes near where she lived. She said:

'To me they are as beautiful as anything I know…The bones seem to cut sharply to the center of something that is keenly alive on the desert even tho’ it is vast and empty and untouchable.'

Do you agree? Why do you think she painted

Georgia O'Keeffe

(1887-1986)

Who Was Georgia O'Keeffe?

Artist Georgia O'Keeffe studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York. Photographer and art dealer Alfred Stieglitz gave O'Keeffe her first gallery show in 1916, and the couple married in 1924. Considered the "mother of American modernism," O'Keeffe moved to New Mexico after her husband's death and was inspired by the landscape to create numerous well-known paintings. O'Keeffe died on March 6, 1986, at the age of 98.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Georgia Totto O'Keeffe
BORN: November 15, 1887
BIRTHPLACE: Sun Prairie, Wisconsin
DEATH: March 6, 1986
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Scorpio

Early Life

O'Keeffe was born on November 15, 1887, on a wheat farm in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Her parents grew up together as neighbors; her father Francis Calixtus O'Keeffe was Irish, and her mother Ida Totto was of Dutch and Hungarian heritage. Georgia, the second of seven children, was named after her Hungarian maternal grandfather George Totto.

O'Keeffe's mother, who had aspired to become a doctor, encou

Georgia O'Keeffe

An American Icon
Georgia O’Keeffe is one of the most significant and intriguing artists of the twentieth century, known internationally for her boldly innovative art. Her distinct flowers, dramatic cityscapes, glowing landscapes, and images of bones against the stark desert sky are iconic and original contributions to American Modernism— a style of art that departed significantly from the traditions of the past. In a career spanning more than sixty years, she produced more than a thousand artworks. O’Keeffe’s artworks were first exhibited in New York in 1916 by Alfred Stieglitz, an art dealer and internationally known photographer. He was America’s leading advocate for modern art and eventually became O’Keeffe’s husband. After the famous Armory Show of 1913, an art exhibit that introduced radically different art to American audiences, Stieglitz’s primary interest became exhibiting the work of innovative American painters such as Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Edward Steichen, and Max Weber. O’Keeffe

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