Red Canna
1924 · Oil on canvas mounted on Masonite · 91 × 76 cm
Sky Above Clouds IV
1965 · Oil on canvas · 244 × 732 cm
Ram's Head, White Hollyhock and Little Hills
1935 · Oil on canvas · 76 × 91 cm
Black Iris
1926 · Oil on canvas · 91 × 76 cm
Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1
1932 · Oil on canvas · 122 × 101 cm
Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) was an American artist widely regarded as the "Mother of American Modernism." She is best known for her large-scale paintings of flowers, New Mexico landscapes, and bleached animal bones. She was one of the first American artists to practice pure abstraction and helped establish American modern art independently from European movements.
Her most iconic works include Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 (1932), which sold for $44.4 million in 2014; Black Iris (1926); Ram's Head, White Hollyhock and Little Hills (1935); Sky Above Clouds IV (1965); and the Red Canna series. Her flower paintings are among the most recognized images in American art.
O'Keeffe painted flowers at greatly magnified scale to make viewers truly see them, saying "Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small." While critics, particularly influenced by Freudian theory, read sexual imagery into her flowers, O'Keeffe consistently rejected these interpretations, insisting her paintings were about color, form, and the experience of looking closely.
O'Keeffe died on March 6, 1986, at the age of 98, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She had lost central vision due to macular degeneration in the early 1970s but continued to work with assistants. She lived an extraordinarily long and productive life, creating art well into her nineties.
The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is dedicated to her work and holds over 1,000 of her pieces. Major works are also displayed at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, and the Whitney Museum. Her home and studio in Abiquiú, New Mexico, is a National Historic Landmark.
This page features public domain works by Georgia O'Keeffe and is not managed by the artist.
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