Little friends, let me tell you about Georgia Totto O’Keeffe😲!!
She was an American modernist painter and draftswomen whose career spans over seven decades!
She is also known as the “Mother of American Modernism.”
Her paintings of flowers and desert-inspired landscapes have inspired a lot of people😲!!
So, let us go through some amazing facts about the life and works of this amazing painter!
Interesting Georgia o keeffe facts
Georgia O’Keeffe was born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin
Little friends, have you heard this amazing fact that Georgia was born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin?
She was born on November 15, 1887.
Her parents, Ida O’Keeffe and Francis Calyxtus O’Keeffe were dairy farmers🐄!
Georgia got her name after her maternal grandfather🧓 George Victor Totto, who was a Hungarian count who came to the United States in 1848.
Georgia’s father was of Irish descent, and she was the second of seven children!
She attended Sun Prairie’s Town Hall School, and when she was 10, she decided to become an artist!
Georgia, a student at the Art Institute of Chicago
At the Art Institute of Chicago, Georgia, studied from 1905 to 1906.
Later from 1907 to 1908, she studied at the Art Students League in New York 🏛️!
There, she learned under the well-known artist William Merritt Chase!
There she studied under Kenyon Cox, William Merritt Chase, and F. Luis Mora!
In the year 1908, she won the prestigious William Merritt Chase still-life prize of the League for her oil painting Dead Rabbit with Copper Pot! Really impressive, isn’t it?
Flower paintings make up a small percentage of O’Keeffe’s work
I am really amazed to know this interesting fact about O’Keeffe! Want to explore?
Though O’Keeffe is most famous for her lovingly painted close-up of flowers, such as Oriental Poppies and Black Iris, still these amazing paintings make about just around 200 of her more than 2000 paintings 🖼️!
The rest of her work primarily depicts leaves, landscapes, rocks, bones, and shells!
Georgia also painted skyscrapers
While nature was O’Keeffe’s main source of inspiration, the time she spent in Manhattan in the 1920s spurred the creation of surreal efforts!
Some of those efforts were City Night, 🌆 New York With Moon, and The Shelton with Sunspots!
Georgia was not native to the American Southwest
Did you know this surprising fact about Georgia O’Keeffe? No? Let me tell you.
Though she was born in Wisconsin, she went to live in Chicago, New York’s Lake George, Virginia, Charlottesville, and Amarillo.
In the year 1917, she first visited New Mexico, and as she grew older, her trips there turned out to be more frequent!
In the year 1946, following the death of her husband, O’Keeffe permanently moved to New Mexico!
Georgia rejected sexual interpretations of her paintings
For many decades, critics assumed that the flowers 🌻 painted by O’Keeffe were intended as homages, or at the very least, allusions to the female form!
However, in the year 1943, she insisted that they thought it completely wrong!
She even said, “Well-I made you take time to look at what I saw when you took time to really notice my flowers, you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower, and write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower-and I don’t.”
Georgia immersed herself in nature
Love nature? Then like me, you will surely love this amazing fact about Georgia!
While in New Mexico, O’Keeffe spent falls and summers at her Ghost Ranch!
There she tried to put up with the hottest and most stifling days of the region in order to catch its most vivid colors!
The rest part of the year, she used to stay at her second home, which was located in the small town of Abiquiu!
When Georgia wasn’t painting in her Model-A, she often camped out in harsh surrounding terrain to remain close to the landscapes that were her inspiration!
The favorite studio of Georgia O’Keeffe the backseat of a Model-A Ford
Carolyn Kastner, the former curator of Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Sante Fe, talked about Georgia’s favorite studio in an interview with C-SPAN.
She explained how the famous artist customized her car for this purpose.
She said: “She would remove the driver’s seat. Then she would unbolt the passenger car and turn it around to face the back seat. Then she would lay the canvas on the back seat as an easel and paint inside her Model-A Ford.”
Painting inside the car 🚗enabled O’Keeffe to stay out of the unrelenting desert sun!
While remaining there, she painted many of her later productions!
Not even bad weather could keep O’Keeffe away to creat arts
I am really surprised to learn this amazing fact about Georgia O’Keeffe!
This amazing artist would rig up tents from tarps, contend with unrelenting downpours, and even paint with gloves when it got too cold!
Georgia would love to go camping well into her 70s and even enjoyed a rafting trip, which is well-documented with photographer Todd Webb at the age of 74!
Georgia’s camping equipment is occasionally exhibited at the well-known Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
Georgia O’Keeffe: A famous artist that served as a muse to other artists
O’Keeffe was one of the most photographed women of the 20th century, thanks in part to Stieglitz.
Stieglitz made O’Keeffe the important subject of a long-term series of portraits.
Those portraits were meant to capture individuals as they aged! Also, she made for a striking model!
Though he passed away in 1946, the project lived on as other photographers searched for O’Keeffe!
They searched for her in order to capture the amazing artist against the harsh landscapes of New Mexico, which she loved so dearly!
Georgia and Stieglitz wrote each other around 25000 pages of love letters
Little fact-lovers, did you know this interesting fact about O’Keeffe?
In 1916, when the pair met, Stieglitz was quite famous and also married!
However, at that time, Georgia was unknown and 23 years her junior!
All the same, they started writing to each other often, sometimes even two or three times a day, and also at a length of 40 pages at a time!
These preserved writings display the progression of their romance💌, including the flirtation stage to the affair and later to their marriage!
These two got married in the year 1924 and even documented the struggles of their marital life!
Georgia married the man who was behind her first gallery show
“At last, a woman on paper!” That’s what Alfred Stieglitz cried when he first saw the abstract charcoal drawings of Georgia O’Keeffe!
He was a modernist photographer and gallery owner!
Stieglitz was so enthusiastic about this series of sketches that he wanted to display them prior to consulting their creator!
When Georgia arrived at his gallery, she wasn’t actually happy and brusquely introduced herself as, “I am Georgia O’Keeffe, and you will have to take these pictures down.”
Despite their not-so-pleasing beginnings, O’Keeffe and Stieglitz quickly came closer!
Later, they went on to become partners in life and in art!
Georgia O’Keeffe, The mother of American Modernism
Looking for what she called “the Great American Thing,” O’Keeffe was part of the Stieglitz Circle!
The circle included such lauded early modernists as Arthur Dove, Charles Demuth, John Marin, Marsden Hartley, Edward Steichen, and Paul Strand!
By the mid-1920s, she became the first female painter🎨 to receive acclaim alongside her male contemporaries in the cutthroat art world of New York!
Her distinctive way of rendering nature in forms and shapes made them seem simultaneously familiar!
Thus, those earned her a reputation as a pioneer of this amazing form!
O’Keeffe quit painting thrice
The first break spanned a few years when Georgia took on more stable jobs to support her family through financial troubles!
In the early 1930s, a nervous breakdown resulted in her hospitalization🏥!
It even caused her to set aside her brushes for over a year!
In the years that led up to her death in 1986, failing eyesight forced Georgia O’Keeffe to give up painting completely!
Until then, she fought really hard to keep working!
She even enlisted assistants to prepare her canvas and mix her oil paints for her amazing works like Sky Above Clouds/ Yellow Horizon and Clouds☁️.
Georgia O’Keeffe, an artist who blazed new trails for female artists
Like me, you will be completely surprised to learn this fact about O’Keeffe!
In the year 1946, O’Keeffe became the first woman to earn a retrospective at the famous Museum of Modern Art!
After twenty-four years, a Whitney Museum of American Art retrospective exhibit introduced Georgia’s works to a whole new generation!
Around fifteen years after that, O’Keeffe was included in the inaugural slate of artists!
Those artists were selected to receive the newly founded National Medal of Arts for Georgia’s contribution to American culture!
After going bling: O’Keeffe turned to sculpting
Although Georgia O’Keeffe’s vision eventually made painting completely impossible, her desire to create was not squelched at all!
She memorably declared, “I can see what I want to paint.” She further added, “The thing that makes you want to create is still there.”
O’Keeffe started experimenting with clay sculpting in her late 80s!
Later, she even continued with it into her 96th year!
The Flag: An amazing painting of O’Keeffe
O’Keeffe taught at the art department at West Texas State Normal College!
She did this to watch over her youngest sister Claudia, at her mother’s request!
Also, in 1917, she visited Alexis, her brother, at a military💂♂️ camp in Texas prior to being shipped out for Europe during the First World War!
While there, Georgia created the famous painting The Flag! This piece of art expressed her depression and anxiety about the war!
Georgia O’Keeffe was not fearless: she rejected fear completely
I am really impressed to learn this amazing fact about this amazing artist! Want to know?
This famous female artist and painter Georgia O’Keeffe was purported to have said, “I have been absolutely terrified every moment of my life, and I have never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.”
Summing up
Georgia Totto O’Keeffe…isn’t the person and facts regarding this amazing artist really wonderful😲!!
We have tried to gather as much information about her as possible…so that your treasure of knowledge is enhanced.
Hope you like them!!
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