Almanac: Georgia O'Keeffe
And now a page from our "Sunday Morning" Almanac: November 15th, 1887, 128 years ago today ... the day artist Georgia O'Keeffe was born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin.
Educated at the Art Institute of Chicago, O'Keefe's works first won notice in 1916 at the New York City gallery run by the famed photographer Alfred Stieglitz.
She soon became his muse, and his model ... and, in 1924, his wife.
Following his death in 1946, O'Keeffe left New York for New Mexico, where she'd been occasionally spending time.
Its desert landscape fascinated her from the first, as she recalled in this 1981 interview for "Sunday Morning":
"The country, my God. I saw the country from the hill up there. The road went high over the hill and I looked out over the valley, and the red hills and these cliffs go quite a long distance -- and nobody was there."
Inspired by her surroundings, Georgia O'Keeffe painted flowers ... animal skulls ... and the vibrant colors of the desert landscape. "I painted it so often, it became mine," she said. "I've looked at it so long."
Active and alert deep into old age, O'Keeffe died in 1986. She was 98.
In 1997, a museum devoted to her work opened in Santa Fe.
And last year, one of her paintings, "Jimson Weed - White Flower No. 1" (1932), sold at auction for just over $44 million ... far and away the highest price ever paid for any work by a female artist.
- Georgia O'Keeffe Country ("Sunday Morning," 05/18/14)
- Fertile women see O'Keeffe's art as sexier (Live Science, 04/19/11)
- George O'Keeffe at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
For more info:
- Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, N.M.