When O’Keeffe’s World Went Dark, She Still Saw Art

by Edwin Torres, age 13

Georgia Totto O’Keeffe is known as one of the most famous and remarkable artists of the 20th century. Throughout her life, O’Keeffe explored various artistic styles.

O’Keeffe was born on November 15, 1887, on a farm near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. She was the second of seven children. O’Keeffe and her sisters took art lessons with a local watercolor painter. In 1905, when O’Keeffe graduated from high school, she already had plans of being an artist. She studied art at the Art Institute of Chicago, but her studies were interrupted when she fell ill from typhoid fever.

After her recovery, she took summer classes at the University of Virginia and also studied at the Art Students League in New York. O’Keeffe was constantly seeking ways to express herself, and she was open to various artistic styles, including abstract art, which she explored while teaching art in South Carolina and West Texas.

O’Keeffe mailed some of her abstract pieces to her friend Anita Pollitzer in New York City. Her friend showed them to Alfred Stieglitz, a famous photographer and art dealer, who later became O’Keeffe’s husband. He became the first to display her art in 1916.

In the mid-1920s, O’Keeffe was acknowledged as one of America’s most successful and talented artists, renowned for her New York skyscraper paintings and flower depictions.

In 1929, O’Keeffe traveled to northern New Mexico. The barren landscape, as well as the Hispanic and Native American culture of the area, inspired a new path in her art. For two decades straight, she spent almost all her summers working and living in New Mexico. In 1949, O’Keeffe made New Mexico her lifelong home, three years after the death of her husband.

In the 1950s, she started traveling abroad. She worked on paintings that recalled the amazing places she had visited, such as Peru’s mountain peaks in 1956 and Mount Fuji in Japan in 1959. When O’Keeffe was 73, she began painting aerial views of the sky and clouds, inspired by her experiences flying in airplanes.

Later in her life, she was diagnosed with macular degeneration, which led to her vision worsening over time. In 1972, O’Keeffe painted her last unassisted oil painting. Although she struggled to keep creating art, she didn't let it get in the way of her dreams. “I can see what I want to paint. The thing that makes you want to create is still there.” After getting to a point where she was almost completely blind, she obtained the help of various assistants to keep creating art.

Georgia O’Keeffe passed away on March 6, 1986, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She was 98. Despite her death, O’Keeffe’s legacy for art will continue to live on and inspire people who want to pursue their passion for art.

[Source: O’Keeffe Museum; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]