Study Guide
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe Museum
Why They Matter
Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) developed a visual language that bridged representation and abstraction more seamlessly than almost any American artist. Her famous magnified flowers — painted so large that viewers are forced inside them — strip botanical subjects of sentimental associations, revealing them as pure arrangements of curve, color, and edge.
O'Keeffe's New Mexico landscapes (from the 1930s onward) perform a similar operation on terrain: mesas, sky, and bone become flattened planes of color that recall Precisionist geometry while retaining the specificity of place. Her career-long insistence on her own vision — refusing to accept Freudian readings imposed by critics, maintaining artistic independence from her husband Alfred Stieglitz's circle — also made her a model for artistic self-determination. Her influence on American Modernism, feminist art discourse, and the visual identity of the American Southwest remains immense.
Representative Works
Black Iris III (1926)
A magnified iris rendered in deep purples and blacks. The petals fill the canvas entirely, transforming a flower into an abstract study of concentric organic forms.
Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue (1931)
A bleached skull centered against bands of color echoing the American flag. O'Keeffe reclaimed the skull as a symbol of desert vitality rather than death.
Sky Above Clouds IV (1965)
A 24-foot-wide canvas depicting an aerial cloud field receding to the horizon. The largest work she ever made, it oscillates between landscape and geometric pattern.
No images hosted — text descriptions only, in compliance with copyright.
How to Read with the Mend Index
Apply these B/P/M/S interpretation tips when evaluating works attributed to Georgia O'Keeffe:
O'Keeffe's surfaces are smooth and meticulously finished — visible brushstrokes are rare. Works with heavy impasto or rough handling are inconsistent.
The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum maintains the catalogue raisonné. Works should be traceable through Stieglitz gallery records, estate records, or documented sales.
Primarily oil on canvas. Pastels and charcoals (especially early abstractions from the 1910s) and watercolors form a secondary body.
Charcoal abstractions (1915–16), magnified flowers (1920s), New Mexico landscapes and bones (1930s+), and late sky/cloud paintings (1960s) each have distinctive palettes and forms.
Official collection — images not hosted here due to copyright
Georgia O'Keeffe Museum: Georgia O'Keeffe