Georgia O'Keeffe and New Mexico: A Sense of Place
June 11, 2004 - September 12, 2004
Barbara Buhler Lynes
When Georgia O'Keeffe first visited New Mexico in 1917, she was instantly drawn
to the unusual beauty of its stark architectural and landscape forms. Beginning
in 1929, she spent part of almost every year painting there—first in Taos,
and subsequently in and around Alcalde, Abiquiu, and Ghost Ranch. She also made
occasional excursions to remote sites she found particularly compelling, such
as the strikingly barren, nearly monochromatic hills 150 miles west of Abiquiu.
Calling this area the Black Place, O'Keeffe painted it many times during the
1940s. In 1949, three years after the death of her husband, Alfred Stieglitz,
O'Keeffe made New Mexico her permanent home.
Georgia O'Keeffe and New Mexico: A Sense of Place is the first
exhibition to explore the intent and importance of O'Keeffe's famous
depictions of these southwestern landscapes. Among its 50 paintings by
the artist, completed between 1929 and the early 1950s, are works from
the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum collection, such as Black Mesa Landscape
/ Out Back of Marie's II (1930), and rarely seen images from private
collections, including Lavender Hill Forms (1930) and Hill,
New Mexico (1935). Because the exhibition explores issues pertaining
to the sites O'Keeffe selected and how she rendered them in her paintings,
it will also present striking photographs of 20 landscape configurations
that inspired her paintings. An exhibition catalogue, published by the
Princeton University Press, offers essays by Barbara Buhler Lynes, curator
of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum and of the exhibition, and two other noted
authors, Frederick Turner and Lesley Poling-Kempes.
The exhibition travels first to the Columbus Art Museum (October 1, 2004– January
16, 2005), then to the Delaware Art Museum (February 17–May 15 2005), where
it will commemorate the opening of that museum's new building.
Exhibition venues: Georgia O'Keeffe Museum
June 11 through September 12, 2004
Columbus Museum of Art
October 1, 2004 through January 16, 2005
Albright-Knox Art Gallery
February 17 through May 15, 2005