The exhibition is organized by the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen / Basel, the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, in partnership with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe.
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Short biography Georgia O’Keeffe
From 1918, Georgia O’Keeffe spent decisive years of her artistic development in New York City, at the heart of the then fashionable and highly influential small circle around Alfred Stieglitz.
O’Keeffe owed her early recognition and subsequent career to the support provided by Stieglitz, who later became her husband, and to her connection over many decades to the New York art scene. Yet in terms of her artistic output, urban life left only very few discernible traces.
O’Keeffe grew up on her parents’ dairy farm in Wisconsin, in the American Midwest. The decisive steps in her artistic development took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, and later in Canyon, Texas, where she taught art from 1916 to 1918.
Even after moving to New York, her life as an artist remained punctuated by regular stays in different places. During many years, she thus spent summers at the Stieglitz family’s holiday home on Lake George in the State of New York, which provided the inspiration for much of the work she produced during this time.
In 1929, O’Keeffe for the first time spent several weeks in New Mexico in the American Southwest, where she would henceforth return every year, always alone, and where she would settle for good following Stieglitz’ death.