Georgia O'Keeffe
"TO CREATE ONE'S WORLD IN ANY OF THE ARTS TAKES COURAGE"
Georgia O'Keeffe, a painter who became known in the 1920's, is known for her signature style of the southwest landscapes and flowers. She was a jump-starter of modernism and close-up images.
O'Keeffe's career, although she went to the Teacher's College of Columbia, where she met an inspiration of hers, Arthur Dow, and the Art Institute of Chicago, really started with a few charcoal drawing seen by a Mr. Alfred Stieglitz, who featured her works in an art show without her permission. From there, with the help of Stieglitz, her path as an artist was set.
O'Keeffe and Stieglitz married, but later, after fights and infidelity on Stieglitz's side, things were tense, and after his death was when O'Keeffe really started to focus on her already existing love of the southwest and started to portray it through her art. She loved the landscapes especially, and drew the various scenes in multiple ways.
Another one of O'Keeffe's signature tropes was her bold cityscapes. As seen in previous works, she again uses a simplistic style with bold lines that make the paintings stand out.
"When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else."
One of O'Keeffe's signature objects was the flower. She used somewhat new techniques such as cropping and close-ups, as well as using primarily lines and colors to define the shapes of her subject. Of course, she didn't use those techniques for all her paintings, and she quite often added abstract to realism to create some of the first modernist works.
In her later life, O'Keeffe was recognized by many important figures and organizations, such as the Whitney Museum of American art and Presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. The Whitney Museum of American Art categorized her as one of "the most important and influential American painters", and she received the Medal of Freedom and the Medal of Arts from President Ford and President Reagan respectively. By the time of her death in 1986, she had lived a wonderful and accomplished life.
EFFECT ON MODERN ART
Georgia O'Keeffe was an influential person in the starting of the modern art movement. She was one of the first artists to really combine abstract and realism on a major scale. Her unique style was somewhat groundbreaking, and she was dubbed pretty much the first female modern artist. Her bold addition of abstraction to the classic realism really gave freedom to the artists to come.
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Click to watch a biographical video about Georgia O'Keeffe.
GEORGIA O'KEEFFE AND EMMA LAMBERT
When looking at Lambert's art, the similarities between O'Keefe's art and hers are similar. The swirling patterns, adventurous colors, and swooping lines all create a very beautiful and alluring image. Lambert's works are obviously a more evolved and modern version, but all in all, the two share the way they use color and lines to create a beautiful collage of colors.