Paintings Done by Georgia O'Keeffe

Women's History Month

Georgia O'Keeffe was an American artist born on November 15, 1887. She grew up in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Photographer Alfred Stieglitz gave Georgia O'Keeffe her first gallery show in 1916 and the couple married in 1924. O'Keeffe moved to New Mexico after her husband's death and was inspired by the landscape to create numerous well-known paintings. 

She is known for her paintings of flowers, bones, shells, stones, leaves, trees, mountains, and other natural forms. Six of her calla lily paintings sold for $25,000, which was the largest amount ever paid at the time for a group of paintings by a living American artist.

She was given a one-woman exhibition in 1946 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York which was the first given by that museum to a woman. Her major retrospective in 1970 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, placed her as one of the most important and influential American painters.

O'Keeffe's vision deteriorated in 1971 and she withdrew from artistic life. Georgia received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977, and the National Medal of Arts in 1985. 

O'Keeffe died on March 6, 1986, in Santa Fe, Mexico. Her works can be seen at museums around the world as well as the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Georgia O'Keeffe inspires me because she did not follow what was normal in the art industry. She did not follow any specific movement in the arts, rather she created her own way. This inspires me to fulfill my dream whether or not it follows what others do. 

"I found I could say things with color and
 shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for."