The Grenoble Museum in France has opened the first comprehensive monograph dedicated to American painter Georgia O'Keeffe, showcasing the career of an American art icon. The exhibition, running through February 7, 2016, traces O'Keeffe's artistic journey from her early creations in New York to her permanent relocation to New Mexico in 1949, highlighting how she was profoundly influenced by modern photography.
The exhibition presents a unique dialogue between O'Keeffe's paintings and photographs by her photographer friends, featuring a total of 80 works from fifteen American museums and major German, Spanish, and French institutions. This carefully curated collection demonstrates how photography shaped O'Keeffe's distinctive artistic vision throughout her career.
Georgia O'Keeffe occupies a singular place in American art history. Her instantly recognizable paintings are distinguished by their immediacy, the sensuality of their colors, and the clarity of motifs that impose themselves persistently on memory. The power of these images, which challenge the visible world, stems from the tension created by enigmatic forms that often oscillate between abstraction and figuration.
O'Keeffe gained recognition in the 1920s through her paintings of flowers and buildings rendered with photographic realism. During this period, she absorbed the aesthetic principles of the Precisionist movement, working alongside painters in Alfred Stieglitz's circle including Arthur Dove, John Marin, Charles Demuth, and Marsden Hartley. She later developed a unique formal repertoire deeply influenced by her life in the New Mexico desert.
From the 1960s onward, living in spiritual communion with her Southwestern environment, O'Keeffe created abstract compositions whose formal purity and sensual tones echoed the works of Mark Rothko, Ellsworth Kelly, and Agnes Martin. Her later works demonstrated a mature artistic vision that bridged the gap between representation and abstraction.
Born in 1887 in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O'Keeffe developed a personal artistic vision at an early age, inspired by the vast plains of Texas and influenced by Art Nouveau's flowing lines. Following her encounter with photographer and avant-garde advocate Alfred Stieglitz, she moved to New York in 1918 to dedicate herself exclusively to her art. Initially Stieglitz's muse and later his wife in 1924, O'Keeffe discovered European avant-garde art at Gallery 291 and became part of Stieglitz's influential circle.
Her unique body of work, born from a strong individual vision, drew its sources from nature. Operating between abstraction and figuration, her work developed in series following a resolutely modernist approach. Her compositions emerged primarily from her observation of the world around her, beginning with Texas skies, the mountains of Lake George, New York's skyscrapers, and flowers.
Starting in 1929, O'Keeffe chose to spend her summers in Santa Fe before permanently settling in New Mexico in 1949. There, she lived in intimate communion with nature, embracing the solitude of wide-open spaces and driving her car through the desert. This experience inspired new subjects in her work: vernacular architecture, canyons, bones, skies, and rivers.
Throughout her career, O'Keeffe remained attentive to developments in modern photography, and the photographic vision she assimilated partly explains the power of her images. The exhibition highlights this connection by featuring seven photographers who influenced her work and whom she, in turn, influenced: Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter, and Todd Webb. Beyond Stieglitz's famous photographs that first captured the artist's beauty, these photographers shared with O'Keeffe not only common motifs but also favorite locations—New York and New Mexico—that shaped their respective artistic visions.
The exhibition "Georgia O'Keeffe and Her Photographer Friends" runs until February 7, 2016, at the Grenoble Museum, located at 5, place Lavalette, 38000 Grenoble. The museum is open daily except Tuesdays from 10 AM to 6:30 PM, and closed on January 1, May 1, and December 25. The exhibition is curated by Guy Tosatto and Sophie Bernard.
