Abstraction

Georgia O’Keeffe began working with abstraction in 1915, and was then one of a handful of American artists exploring this means of expression, such as Arthur Dove, Manierre Dawson, and Alfred Maurer. Although some of her subsequent work depicted representation subjects, abstraction remained her primary expressive language until 1923, when she confronted the critical response to her first retrospective exhibition that interpreted her work as a manifestation of her sexuality. In an attempt to direct the critics away from what she considered to be misreading of her art, she increasingly shifted her attention to the depiction of recognizable forms. By the mid-1920s she had redefined herself as a representational painter, and she remains best known today for her works with recognizable subject matter.