Georgia O'Keeffe was born on a farm in Sun Prairie,
Wisconsin. She
knew from the time she was a young girl she wanted to be an artist. Her
parents encouraged her interest and gave her lessons. She was one of
seven children in the family, and the education of their children was
important to her parents. Her mother had been educated in the East.
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The family moved to Virginia, and Georgia took private
art lessons for
several years. When she was eighteen years old she went to live with
her aunt and attended the Art Institute of Chicago. Next she returned
to her family in Virginia.
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She worked for a while as a commercial artist, then
a friend told her about a job in Amarillo, Texas which she accepted,
and she became an art supervisor in the public schools. She worked
there for two years and in the summers taught art at the University of
Virginia.
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Her friend, Anita Pollitzer sent some of her charcoal
drawings to a
photographer, Alfred Stieglitz, who had a gallery called the 291
Gallery in New York. Stieglitz was impressed with her work, and without
her knowledge exhibited ten of the drawings. She was quite upset when
she found out he had exhibited them with asking for her permission to
do so. She went to talk to him and agreed to give him permission. This
visit also began a relationship which would later result in their
marriage.
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At one time she taught art at West Texas State Normal
College in
Canyon, Texas. (The college was later called West Texas State Teachers
College and now is West Texas A&M University.)
The college is near the beautiful Palo Dura Canyon where Georgia did at
least 50 watercolor paintings.
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Georgia O'Keeffe is famous for her paintings of
flowers. She made them
very large so they filled the whole canvas. She painted many kinds of
flowers. You may have seen her pictures of poppies and irises such as the one featured on this
page.
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She loved New Mexico. The scenes of New Mexico and the
bleached cow
bones she found there became the subject of several works such as Horse's Skull on Blue
. After her husband died she moved to New Mexico and spent the rest of
her life there. Her eyesight became poor in later years, and when she
could no longer paint pictures in oil, she began to work with drawing
pencils, watercolor, and clay.
She died at the age of 98.
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