Christina Cox Art Blog
Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) was an internationally admired modern painter whose extraordinary career spanned seven decades. Born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O’Keeffe studied at the Chicago Art Institute and the Art Students League in New York, worked briefly as a commercial artist in the Chicago fashion industry, and became a teacher.
A summer course at the University of Virginia in 1912 turned the young teacher in a new direction by exposing her to the innovative ideas of art educator Arthur Wesley Dow. Inspired by Dow’s theories, O’Keeffe returned to her original goal of becoming a professional artist. She alternated during the next few years between teaching and periods of formal study and artistic experimentation.
In January 1916, a friend showed O’Keeffe’s abstract charcoal drawings to photographer and modern art impresario Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz exhibited them in his Manhattan gallery that spring, at a time when O’Keeffe was once again studying in New York. O’Keeffe taught in Texas for another two years and then rejoined Stieglitz in New York in June 1918. The two married in 1924.
O’Keeffe began spending her summers in the American Southwest in 1929, and eventually purchased a home in New Mexico. She moved to New Mexico permanently a few years after Stieglitz died in 1946. Georgia O’Keeffe continued to travel and paint until her death in 1986 at the age of 98.