Interesting Facts About Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe is called the mother of American modernism, famous for giant flowers and desert bones, and she lived to 98.
Here are the facts behind one of the most independent figures in American art.
She rejected the flower readings
O'Keeffe is best known for her huge close ups of flowers, which many critics insisted were secretly about the female body.
She rejected that reading firmly all her life, saying people were projecting their own ideas onto her work, and that a flower was a flower.
The city and the desert
Before the desert, she painted soaring views of New York skyscrapers at night, proving she was far more than a flower painter.
Then she fell for New Mexico, collecting sun bleached animal bones and painting them floating against the sky, images that became as famous as the flowers.
Marriage to a famous photographer
She was married to Alfred Stieglitz, the pioneering photographer and gallery owner who helped launch her career and made hundreds of photographs of her.
Their relationship shaped how the world first saw her, something she spent later decades stepping out from to be known on her own terms.
A life of fierce independence
Born in Wisconsin in 1887, O'Keeffe trained as an art teacher and taught in Texas before her career took off, and the wide skies of the American plains stayed with her.
Famously self reliant, she drove a Model A Ford out into the desert and painted from inside it to escape the sun, and kept making art with the help of assistants even as her sight failed near the end.
Quick facts about O'Keeffe
What is she called?
The mother of American modernism.
Did she agree the flowers were sexual?
No, she rejected that reading.
What did she paint besides flowers?
New York skyscrapers and desert bones.
Who was her husband?
The photographer Alfred Stieglitz.
The artist who painted on her own terms
O'Keeffe spent her long life refusing to be defined by men, by critics or by the flowers everyone wanted to read into, and that stubborn independence is now as famous as the paintings. More in the Georgia O'Keeffe guide.