Georgia O'Keeffe

Overview

Perhaps the most colorful Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin lived a life of lasting influence. As politician, publisher, inventor and diplomat, Franklin created a dynamic reputation in his lifetime that has continued to this day. Join Active Minds as we trace the life of this extraordinary man and tell some of the stories that mark his legacy.

Key Lecture Points

  • Born in 1887 to dairy farmers in Wisconsin, Georgia O’Keeffe knew from an early age that she wanted to be an artist. Despite illness and financial setbacks, she traveled extensively in the US to further her training and hone her skills as a visual artist.
  • O’Keeffe’s relationship with photographer and New York gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz changed the course of her personal and professional life. He became both her husband and the strongest voice advocating for her art, even though they didn’t always share a vision of what her art meant.  Their marriage would be an estranged one, especially after Stieglitz began an affair with another woman in 1929.  They would, however, remain married and in support of one another’s art until Stieglitz’ death in 1946.
  • Today, O’Keeffe is sometimes called “the Mother of American Modernism” for her role in establishing modern art in the United States. She was also one of the principal artists in the Precisionist movement.  Although Stieglitz was a significant champion of her work, he was also responsible for an overly simplified reading of her work, particularly her up close depictions of flowers, as representative of female genitalia.  O’Keeffe herself disputed that interpretation throughout her life.
  • During the second half of her life, O’Keeffe spent much of her time in the American Southwest, initially in Taos, New Mexico before eventually establishing herself at Ghost Ranch in Abiquiú, northwest of Santa Fe.  The culture and scenery heavily influenced her work later work including landscapes and (famously) detailed paintings of cow skulls.
  • O’Keeffe stopped painting in 1972 because of macular degeneration. She died in 1986 at 98 years old.  Today, O’Keeffe is one of the best-known and most-recognizable American artists of any gender.

Discussion Questions

  • How did Georgia O’Keeffe’s relationship with Alfred Stieglitz shape her career as an artist?
  • How do you think her time in the Southwest influenced O’Keeffe as an artist? As a human being?
  • What do you think O’Keeffe meant by “I am not a woman painter!”?
  • O’Keeffe wanted her artwork to be “read” and interpreted in a variety of ways. What do you think of when you see one of her “Flower Series” paintings like Red Canna (1923)?

More to Explore

Books For Further Reading

  • Grasso, Linda M. Equal Under the Sky: Georgia O’Keeffe & Twentieth-Century Feminism. 2019. 336 pages. CUNY Professor Linda Grasso presents the first historical study of Georgia O’Keeffe’s involvement with and influence on American feminism.
  • Griffin, Randall C. Georgia O’Keeffe: The Late Work. 2025. 240 pages. Art professor Randall Griffin’s groundbreaking study devotes an entire volume to the often-neglected work from the end of her career, drawing not on the art itself but biographical information and contemporary issues like race, class, gender, indigeneity, spirituality, and ecology.
  • Messinger, Lisa Mintz. Georgia O’Keeffe. 2023. 192 pages. O’Keeffe scholar Messigner’s book surveys the body of Georgia O’Keeffe’s work to explain O’Keeffe’s life in the context of her artistic output. The volume includes full-color reproductions of O’Keeffe’s art.
  • Robinson, Roxana. Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life. 2020—originally published in 1989. 679 pages. Robinson’s exhaustive biography was the first to appear after O’Keeffe’s death in 1986. It is still considered an “indispensable” reference. The expanded edition includes a preface by the author about Robinson’s own encounter with O’Keeffe in the early 1970s.