Georgia O’Keeffe died 39 years ago this week on March 6, 1986, aged 98.
Called the “Mother of American Modernism”, she was the preeminent female painter of the 20th century. Starting as a watercolour artist, at the instigation of her lover and later husband, photographer Alfred Steiglitz, she moved to charcoal drawing and abstraction.
O’Keeffe created many forms of abstract art, including close-ups of flowers, such as the Red Canna paintings, that many found to represent vulvas, though O’Keeffe consistently denied that intention. The imputation of the depiction of women’s sexuality was also fueled by explicit and sensuous photographs of O’Keeffe that Stieglitz had taken and exhibited.
O’Keeffe and Stieglitz lived together in New York until 1929, when O’Keeffe began spending part of the year in the American Southwest, which served as inspiration for her paintings of New Mexico landscapes and images of animal skulls, such as Cow’s Skull: Red, White, and Blue, and Summer Days.
O’Keeffe gained international recognition for her paintings of natural forms, particularly flowers and desert-inspired landscapes, which were often drawn from and related to places and environments in which she lived.
After Stieglitz’s death in 1946, she lived in New Mexico for the next 40 years at her Ghost Ranch home and studio.
In 2014, O’Keeffe’s 1932 painting Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 sold for $44,405,000—at the time, by far the largest price paid for any painting by a female artist.
This documentary, made for Public Television in 1977 by Perry Miller Adato, is less polished than some of the subsequent films made about her but it’s priceless because she collaborated fully with the filmmakers and speaks about her work in a way that nobody else could. It also includes the companion of her last days, the potter John ‘Juan’ Hamilton, who lived with her until her death and was the main heir to her estate.
The post Ruth Leon recommends… Georgia O’Keeffe – American artist appeared first on Slippedisc.
