Georgia O’Keeffe, An Art Legend Who Lives On Today

Georgia O’Keeffe – Her Most Famous Flower and Landscape Paintings

Georgia O’Keeffe is a legend in the world of art and remains one of America’s most popular painters of natural artworks today. Born in Wisconsin in 1887, Georgia was raised in the midst of a large farming family and had six siblings; she was the second oldest. Perhaps one of the reasons Georgia developed an interest in painting was her mother’s cultural interests. In addition to their school studies, Georgia’s mother saw to it that all her daughters studied art, although Georgia said she really did not know where the idea to become an artist came from. Wherever it originated, she was highly successful!

Around the world, people still easily recognize her work, often identifying her paintings immediately upon seeing a huge display of colorful flowers or bones in a dream-like desert.

She also holds the record for the highest price paid for a painting by a woman. On November 20, 2014 at Sotheby’s, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art bought her 1932 painting Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 for US$44.4 million (equivalent to US$57.2 million in 2023).

Jimson Weed, White Flower No. 1, expresses one of O’Keeffe’s favorite subjects: a magnified flower. She made it her purpose to highlight their complex structures, explaining: “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.”

Six calla lily paintings created by Georgia sold for $25,000 in 1928; certainly that amount of money was hardly heard of during the period. At the time, this was the most ever paid for a group of creative works by a still-living American artist.

Before Georgia O’Keeffe became famous, she studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and was given her first gallery show by photographer Alfred Stieglitz in 1916. Eight years later, the couple married and were not only husband and wife, but best friends and partners until the time of Stieglitz’s death in 1946. Following his death, Georgia spent much of her time in New Mexico, where she purchased two homes, the Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch. For 35 years she lived in either of these two homes after moving from New York. In 1984, Georgia moved to Santa Fe where she died two years later.

Georgia’s Abiquiu home is open to tours today. When she purchased the 5,000 square foot Spanish Colonial-era compound in 1945, it was said to be in ruins. Georgia spent four years restoring the home with Maria Chabot, her close friend.

Some of Georgia’s earliest popular works of art include Oriental Poppies, Black Iris, and Shelton Hotel, N.Y. No. 1. These paintings were created during the early years of O’Keeffe’s and Stieglitz’s marriage.

Two of her earliest and most celebrated Southwestern paintings—Cow’s Skull: Red, White, and Blue (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Cow’s Skull with Calico Roses (Art Institute of Chicago) from 1931—express a skull’s weathered surfaces, jagged edges, and irregular openings.  O’Keeffe said that the bones symbolized the eternal beauty of the desert.

O’Keeffe passed away in 1986 at age ninety-eight, her ashes were scattered over the New Mexico landscape she had loved for more than half a century. She created over 900 paintings and is regarded as one of the most famous women artists of all time.

To create one’s world in any of the arts takes courage. ~ Georgia O’Keeffe