Georgia O'Keefe

American modern artist Georgia Totto O'Keefe was born on November 15, 1887 in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin to dairy farmer parents. She decided she was going to be an artist when she was only ten years old. She was a prominent figure in the art community way before women could acquire art training in schools in America. She is deemed to have paved the way for women to have a place America's art community which used to be a man's world. Her innovative abstract works were among the most famous from 1910 to the 1920s. She did large flower paintings and buildings of New York, totally revolutionizing the craft. When she moved to New Mexico in 1949, she focused on painting representations of its churches, culture and landscape.

Of art studies, her first formal training was as a child under Sara Mann, a watercolor artist. After high school, she studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. After that, she studied under William Merritt Chase at the Art Students League in New York. When she won the William Merritt Chase still-life award, she received a scholarship to the League's Lake George outdoor summer school.

However, in 1908, Georgia left her art career. According to her, she would never break out as an artist in the current formulaic tradition. For four years, she didn't paint anything while she worked as a commercial artist in Chicago. But in 1912, after learning about Arthur Wesley Dow's ideas by Alon Bement at the University of Virginia Summer School, she became inspired to go back to painting. She taught art in Amarillo schools. She went to Columbia University's Teachers College, worked as Bement's teaching assistant and taught art at Columbia College. It was there that she made her charcoal abstracts. Later on she became the art department head of the West Texas State Normal College for two years.

Some of Georgia's works were put on exhibit at Alfred Stieglitz's 291 gallery. Her first solo exhibit at the 291 was launched in 1917, which featured oil and watercolor paintings. Later on she married Alfred, who also took over 350 picture portraits of her before he retired from photography. Her works, which were very expensive, were on display in exhibitions organized by Alfred ever year.

She traveled to Santa Fe in her search for inspiration for her art. She went to see deserts and mountains and made her famous painting, The Lawrence Tree, while visiting the D. H. Lawrence Ranch. She also painted several works of the San Francisco de Asis Mission Church in Taos. She collected bones and rocks from the New Mexico desert. Georgia suffered a nervous breakdown in 1932 and did not paint for almost a year. After recuperating in Bermuda, she decided to live in Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, where the landscape served as her inspiration for her well known landscape paintings.

One of her most famous paintings, Summer Days, shows the skull of a cow with wildflowers. She had one-woman retrospectives at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1943 and at the Museum of Modern Art's first for a female artist in 1946. She received recognition from many universities for her exceptional work. The Whitney Museum of American Art sponsored her first catalogue. Georgia made many paintings of the Black Place, even under conditions of strong winds or the sun's extreme heat. She also made works of the White Place, also near her house.

In 1946, she went back to New York to be with Alfred who had suffered a cerebral thrombosis until after he died. When she moved back to New Mexico, she made her distinct works like Ladder to the Moon and Above the Clouds I.

Georgia became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1962 and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1966. Her career was revived by the Georgia O'Keefe Retrospective Exhibition organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art and Sciences in 1970. She lost her central vision in 1972 due to macular degeneration. Her business manager Juan Hamilton taught her to work with clay. She wrote a book on her art in 1976. A movie of her life was made in 1977. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom on January 10, 1977 and in she honored with the National Medal of Arts in 1985.

Georgia died at 98 on March 6, 1986. After her body was cremated, her ashes were thrown into the wind on the Pedernal Mountain according to her wishes.