Why do we love Georgia?

Arguably the most well known and celebrated female artist in history, Georgia O’Keeffe knew from an early age that she was going to be an artist when she grew up. Her parents supported her ambitions, funding years of private art lessons for the precocious painter. After high school, she studied at both the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Student League in New York City. Displeased with her work, she left New York and spent the subsequent several years as a commercial artist and art teacher. While Georgia was teaching in South Carolina and Texas, her friend Anita Pollitzer intervened for destiny by taking a few of Georgia’s drawings into the 291 Gallery in New York, run by the influential photographer, critic, and art scene-maker Alfred Stieglitz. He was massively impressed with her work and hung ten of her drawings without her permission. Though Georgia was deeply honored that Stieglitz appreciated her art, she angrily confronted him for his license. Eventually, she let the works remain hanging, and would go on to have her first solo show—comprised mainly of watercolors of the dry Texas landscape—at 291. Stieglitz considered his gallery’s greatest accomplishment, upon its closing a year later, to be the introduction of a fine woman artist to the world.

However, Stieglitz was interested in more than Georgia’s art. In 1918, he persuaded her to move to New York City because he was in love with her. Despite his unhappy marriage, he and Georgia embarked upon a long-lasting artistically fruitful relationship, marrying in 1924. With his help and promotion, Georgia would go on to become one of the most important and instantly recognizable artists in the world. During the 1920s, she began to paint her huge, abstract expressionist flowers, as well as stunning cityscapes that uniquely captured the spirit of modern Manhattan. Feeling hemmed in by the city, Georgia took a life-altering trip to Taos, New Mexico in 1929. The landscapes and mission buildings made such an impression on her and her art that she would return yearly until Stieglitz’s death in 1946, when she moved to New Mexico permanently. The work she created in New Mexico is among her most famous and identifiable. Georgia and her art went out of fashion for a time in the late 1950s and '60s, but in the 1970s, she was rediscovered as an American treasure. She died in 1986 at the age of 98. Her ashes were scattered over her beloved New Mexico landscape.

Selected Paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe:

• Georgia O'Keeffe Museum
• Art Print Collection

Biography:

Born - November 15, 1887
Sun Prairie, Wisconsin
Died - March 6, 1986
Santa Fe, New Mexico

Achievements:

• 1905 - Graduates from Chatham (Virginia) Episcopal Institute, in senior year served as art editor of the school yearbook Mortar Board.
• 1905 - Attends School of The Art Institute of Chicago
• 1907-1908 - Attended Art Students League, New York and is awared awarded the League’s 1907-08 Still Life Scholarship
• 1914 - Enrolls at Teachers College, Columbia University.
• 1916 - Friend Anita Pollitzer takes a group of O’Keeffe’s charcoal drawings to Alfred Stieglitz at 291 on New Year’s Day.
• 1918 - Stieglitz opens group show at 291 that includes some of O’Keeffe’s charcoal drawings.
• 1917 - Alfred Stieglitz opens Georgia O’Keeffe, first one-person show of her work, at 291
• 1923 - Stieglitz opens Alfred Stieglitz Presents One Hundred Pictures: Oils, Water-colors, Pastels, Drawings, by Georgia O’Keeffe, American, an exhibition of over 100 works at The Anderson Galleries.
• 1924 - O’Keeffe and Stieglitz are married on December 11
• 1926 - Fifty Recent Paintings, by Georgia O’Keeffe, at The Intimate Gallery, which includes first of many depictions of New York architecture completed between 1925 and 1932.
• 1930 - Georgia O’Keeffe: 27 New Paintings, New Mexico, New York, Lake George, Etc., at An American Place, which includes earliest paintings of New Mexico crosses and of San Francisco de Assís Church in Ranchos de Taos.
• 1931 - Georgia O’Keeffe: 33 New Paintings (New Mexico) at An American Place, the first exhibition with paintings of bones.
• 1934 - first visit to Ghost Ranch, a dude ranch north of Abiquiu. Stunning landscape configurations around Ghost Ranch provide new inspiration for her work.
• 1936 - Receives $10,000 commission from Elizabeth Arden to make large painting for new exercise salon in New York.
• 1938 - Receives honorary degree from College of William and Mary, the first of many she would receive during her lifetime.
• 1943 - Retrospective, Georgia O’Keeffe, at the Art Institute of Chicago.
• 1949 - Leaves New York to live permanently in New Mexico
• 1960 - Organizes Georgia O’Keeffe: Forty Years of Her Art, a retrospective at the Worcester (Mass.) Art Museum.
• 1961- Helps organize and install what will be her last exhibition at The Downtown Gallery, Georgia O’Keeffe: Recent Paintings and Drawings
• 1970 - Installs retrospective, Georgia O’Keeffe, at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
• 1971 - Loses central vision; retains only peripheral sight.
• 1972 - Completes last unassisted oil painting, though continues to work in oil with assistance until 1977. (Works unassisted in watercolor and charcoal until 1978 and in graphite until 1984.)
• 1977 - Receives Medal of Freedom from President Gerald Ford.
• 1985 - Awarded National Medal of Arts by President Ronald Reagan.
• 1987 - Inducted into the Kappa Delta Sorority (of which she was a member) Hall of Honor