Born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, on November 15, 1887, Georgia O’Keeffe he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago (1905) and the Art Students League of New York (1907-1908).
He worked briefly as a commercial artist in Chicago, and in 1912 became interested in the principles of oriental design. After working as a public school art supervisor in Amarillo, Texas (1912-1914), she attended art classes led by Arthur Wesley Dow at Columbia University. She later instituted the Dow art education system, based on recurring themes of oriental art, in her teacher training courses at West Texas State Normal College, where she was head of department (1916-1918).
In 1916 Alfred Stieglitz, the well-known New York photographer and advocate of modernism, exhibited some of the abstract drawings of O’Keeffe. In 1924 O’Keeffe and Stieglitz were married.
Lake George, Coat and Red (1919), a salient example of the early abstract style of O’Keeffe, it was a harsh composition in which a convoluted, enigmatic shape stands tall against a hollow rainbow sky. Early in his career he developed an extremely refined personal style, favoring inherently abstract objects such as flower details and austere architectural themes. Many of his paintings were dramatic, focused enlargements of botanical details.
Even if O’Keeffe insisted that there was no symbolism behind his work, art critics continue to speculate about sexual images in paintings such as Black iris (1926) and Jack in the Pulpit No. 6 (1930). Indeed, this generative tension underlying his botanical paintings explains much of their strength and mystery, and these images exalting life and energy were among his most optimistic and successful.
Between 1926 and 1929 O’Keeffe painted a group of views of New York City. New York Night (1929) transformed skyscrapers into gleaming, patterned structures that negate their bulk. More architecturally characteristic were paintings such as The Barns of Lake George (1926) and the Ranchos Church, Taos (1929). These simple buildings, further simplified in his painting, were the anonymous folk architecture of America; in these ways O’Keeffe he found a permanence and tranquility that contrasted with the hectic urban environment.
In 1929 he began to hang out in New Mexico; the old Spanish architecture, the vegetation and the parched terrain of the region, became his recurring themes. In 1945 he bought an old adobe house in New Mexico; she moved there after her husband’s death in 1946. The house served as a frequent theme. In paintings like Black Patio Door (1955) and Patio with Cloud (1956), the details of the doors, windows and walls were radically reduced to practically unchanged planes of color.
The bold American works of O’Keefe they encompassed a broad vision, from the taut towers of the city to the desert landscapes with vivid tones and shapes. O’Keeffe he painted until a few weeks before his death. He died on March 6, 1986, less than a year before his 100th birthday.
Many of his works found a permanent home among the residential buildings of Sante Fe, New Mexico. The Georgia O’Keefe Museum, designed by the New York architect Richard Gluckman, opened its doors in 1997, there are more pastels, drawings, paintings and sculptures than in any other museum.