Georgia O'Keeffe before her trip to Ward
O'Keeffe's abstractions first exhibited in New York, April 1917
Georgia O'Keeffe: A Portrait show at Gallery 291, Alfred Stieglitz, 1917
In April of 1917 before O'Keeffe traveled to Colorado, Alfred Stieglitz, exhibited a series of black and white abstract charcoal sketches by 29 -year-old Georgia O'Keeffe at Gallery 291, his avant garde art gallery in New York that was the first to feature modern artists in the U.S. Stieglitz was both a well-known international photographer and an art impressario, dedicated to displaying the first works of modern European and American artists.
Special No. 5, 1915, Charcoal on paper by Georgia O'Keeffe
Drawing XIII, 1915, charcoal on paper by Georgia O'Keeffe
Serveral of the abstract charcoal drawings that O'Keeffe had completed in 1915 had been taken to Stieglitz by a friend of O'Keeffe's. Stieglitz was extremely excited about the "modern work" of a female artist, and exhibited O'Keeffe's drawings at Gallery 291, first in a group exhibition in 1916, and then in a solo exhibition in April 1917.
Georgia O'Keeffe herself had earlier seen the first U.S. exhibits of European modern artists, such as Picasso, Matisse, and Rodin at Gallery 291 when she attended Columbia University in New York in 1914-1915.
O'Keeffe teaches in Texas, paints water color abstractions
In the fall of 1916 Georgia O'Keeffe had accepted a position teaching art at Texas Normal College in Canyon, Texas. In April, 1917 she took the train to New York to see the Gallery 291 exhibition of her work, but by the time she arrived, her work had already been taken down. Stieglitz rehung her drawings and she spent several days with Stieglitz, photographer Paul Strand, and others associated with Gallery 291. During this time Stieglitz took photographs of O'Keeffe in front of her works.
O'Keeffe returned to Texas and that summer, she completed a series of abstract watercolors which included the Evening Star Series and the Blue Series, which to this day are considered some of her most powerful work. She corresponded frequently with both Stieglitz and Paul Strand, and it is possible that she was infatuated with Strand. Critics have suggested that her energetic burst of powerful colors was related to her feelings about Paul Strand.
While in Texas, O'Keeffe was also close to an older male student, Terry Reid, and had written of the possibility of marrying Reid. She and Reid shared a love of the outdoor spaces, and frequently walked out into the plains surround Canyon or ventured together to the Palo Duro Canyon nearby. O'Keeffe loved the wide open spaces of the Texas plains and was inspired by the vastness of what she saw. Reid entered the Army at the outbreak of WWI in 1917.
Blue I, 1917
Abstraction, 1917
Evening Star, summer 1917
Starry night, water color, 1917
Next - Texas, New York, Steiglitz
( O'Keeffe paintings photos and/or Stieglitz photos public domain-old-50 and /or PD-pre-1923/PD-USGov; more recent works claimed under fair use doctrine)