Georgia O'Keeffe Timeline

(1887 - 1986)

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) was an influential American modernist artist known as the 'Mother of American Modernism.' Her career spanned over seven decades, during which she created iconic works featuring enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and Southwestern landscapes. Her bold abstractions and unique artistic vision made her one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century. More Less

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Early Life and Education

Georgia O'Keeffe is born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin

Nov 15, 1887

Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was born on a dairy farm in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, the second of seven children. Her rural upbringing in the American Midwest would deeply influence her artistic vision and her lifelong fascination with nature, flowers, and the landscape.

Image source: Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O'Keeffe is born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin

O'Keeffe studies at the Art Institute of Chicago

1905 - 1906

O'Keeffe enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1905, where she studied with John Vanderpoel and ranked at the top of her class. A bout of typhoid fever interrupted her studies, forcing her to return home to recover in 1906.

Image source: School of the Art Institute of Chicago

O'Keeffe attends the Art Students League in New York

1907 - 1908

O'Keeffe studied at the Art Students League in New York City under William Merritt Chase, winning the League's William Merritt Chase still-life prize for her oil painting 'Dead Rabbit with Copper Pot.' She worked as a commercial illustrator afterward to support herself.

Image source: Art Students League of New York

O'Keeffe takes summer course with Alon Bement

1912

At the University of Virginia, O'Keeffe took a summer art course taught by Alon Bement of Columbia Teachers College, who introduced her to Arthur Wesley Dow's radical ideas about composition based on line, color, and mass, which transformed her approach to art.

O'Keeffe and Stieglitz marry

Dec 11, 1924

After Stieglitz's divorce from his first wife was finalized, he and O'Keeffe married. The couple spent summers at the Stieglitz family estate at Lake George, New York, and winters in New York City, maintaining a complex but artistically fruitful relationship.

Image source: Alfred Stieglitz

Artistic Career

O'Keeffe creates abstract charcoal drawings

1915

While teaching in Columbia, South Carolina, O'Keeffe produced a series of innovative abstract charcoal drawings based on personal feelings and sensations. These works represented a pioneering move toward pure abstraction in American art and became the foundation of her career.

O'Keeffe moves to Texas to teach and paints the Panhandle

1916 - 1918

O'Keeffe taught at West Texas State Normal College in Canyon, Texas, where the vast, flat landscape of the Panhandle inspired a series of powerful watercolors. Her Texas years marked the beginning of her lifelong engagement with the American Southwest.

Image source: West Texas A&M University

Stieglitz photographs O'Keeffe in an extended portrait series

1918 - 1937

Stieglitz began photographing O'Keeffe in 1918, creating an extraordinary series of more than 300 portraits over two decades. The photographs documented her evolution as an artist and became among the most famous bodies of photographic portraiture in American art history.

O'Keeffe moves to New York City to pursue art full-time

Jun 1918

With financial support from Stieglitz, O'Keeffe left teaching and moved to New York City to devote herself entirely to painting. She lived and worked with Stieglitz, beginning one of the most consequential artistic partnerships in American modern art.

O'Keeffe paints her first large-scale flower paintings

1924

O'Keeffe began creating her iconic magnified close-up paintings of flowers, such as 'Petunia No. 2.' By enlarging blossoms to monumental scale, she forced viewers to see the beauty and abstract qualities of forms often overlooked in everyday life.

O'Keeffe paints New York skyscrapers

1925 - 1929

Living on the 30th floor of the Shelton Hotel, O'Keeffe painted a striking series of cityscapes and skyscrapers, including 'Radiator Building — Night, New York.' These works offered a distinctive, often poetic view of the modern American city.

First visit to New Mexico

1929

O'Keeffe traveled to Taos, New Mexico, with friend Rebecca Strand, beginning a transformative connection with the Southwest. The stark landscapes, adobe architecture, and brilliant light of New Mexico inspired some of her most celebrated paintings, including images of churches, bones, and desert vistas.

O'Keeffe paints 'Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue'

1931

Inspired by the sun-bleached bones she found in the New Mexico desert, O'Keeffe painted this iconic work, presenting the skull against a background evoking the American flag. She described the bones as strangely more alive than the animals that once wore them.

Image source: Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue

O'Keeffe paints 'Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue'

O'Keeffe purchases Ghost Ranch property in New Mexico

1934

O'Keeffe bought a house at Ghost Ranch, north of Abiquiu, New Mexico. The dramatic red and yellow cliffs and desert terrain surrounding Ghost Ranch became the primary subject of her paintings for decades and her principal summer home.

Image source: Ghost Ranch

O'Keeffe travels to Hawaii for Hawaiian Pineapple Company commission

1939

Commissioned by the Dole advertising agency, O'Keeffe spent months in Hawaii, where she painted lush images of tropical flowers, waterfalls, and coastlines. The resulting paintings, including 'Hibiscus with Plumeria,' added a vivid new chapter to her body of work.

O'Keeffe buys the Abiquiu house

1945

O'Keeffe purchased a dilapidated adobe house in Abiquiu, New Mexico, which she renovated with the help of friend Maria Chabot. The home became her winter residence and studio, complementing Ghost Ranch as the center of her life in the Southwest.

O'Keeffe moves permanently to New Mexico

1949

After settling Stieglitz's estate, O'Keeffe made New Mexico her permanent home, dividing her time between Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu. The desert landscape became the wellspring of her late work, including her celebrated paintings of the Pedernal mountain.

O'Keeffe travels internationally in the 1950s and 1960s

1959 - 1965

In her later years, O'Keeffe journeyed around the world, visiting Peru, Japan, India, and other destinations. Aerial views of clouds and rivers from these flights inspired her ambitious late series of cloud paintings, including the monumental 'Sky Above Clouds IV.'

Paints 'Sky Above Clouds IV'

1965

O'Keeffe created 'Sky Above Clouds IV,' an enormous canvas over eight feet tall and twenty-four feet wide depicting clouds seen from an airplane. It became the largest painting of her career and is now in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Image source: Sky Above Clouds

Exhibitions and Recognition

Anita Pollitzer shows O'Keeffe's drawings to Alfred Stieglitz

1916

O'Keeffe's friend Anita Pollitzer brought her abstract charcoals to photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz at his 291 gallery in New York. Stieglitz was deeply impressed and exhibited the drawings without O'Keeffe's knowledge, beginning their famous artistic and personal partnership.

Image source: Anita Pollitzer

First solo exhibition at 291 gallery

Apr 1917

Alfred Stieglitz gave O'Keeffe her first solo exhibition at his 291 gallery in New York City, showcasing her abstract drawings. This show established her as a significant new voice in American modernism and cemented her relationship with Stieglitz.

Image source: 291 (art gallery)

O'Keeffe's first major museum retrospective at Brooklyn Museum

1927

The Brooklyn Museum mounted a retrospective exhibition of O'Keeffe's work, an unusual honor for a living female artist at the time. The show affirmed her growing stature as a leading figure in American modernism.

Image source: Brooklyn Museum

O'Keeffe's work shown at Museum of Modern Art's first exhibition

1929

O'Keeffe was among the artists included in the inaugural exhibitions of the newly founded Museum of Modern Art in New York, underscoring her central place in the canon of American modern art alongside contemporaries like Edward Hopper and Charles Demuth.

Retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art

1946

The Museum of Modern Art organized the first retrospective exhibition of O'Keeffe's work in New York, a landmark recognition of her decades of achievement and the first retrospective MOMA devoted to a woman artist.

Image source: Museum of Modern Art

Retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art

1970

The Whitney Museum's major O'Keeffe retrospective reintroduced her work to a new generation and sparked a revival of interest in her art. The exhibition toured widely and solidified her reputation as a foundational figure of American modernism.

Image source: Whitney Museum

O'Keeffe receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom

1977

President Gerald Ford awarded O'Keeffe the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States, recognizing her extraordinary contributions to American art and culture.

Image source: Presidential Medal of Freedom

Later Life and Legacy

O'Keeffe suffers a nervous breakdown and is hospitalized

1933

After periods of intense work and personal strain, O'Keeffe suffered a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized for two months. Following her recovery, she resumed painting with renewed focus and soon produced some of her most famous works.

Alfred Stieglitz dies

Jul 13, 1946

Alfred Stieglitz died of a stroke, ending O'Keeffe's thirty-year partnership with him. She spent the following years managing his estate, cataloguing his photographs, and organizing the distribution of his collections to museums before permanently settling in New Mexico.

O'Keeffe loses central vision but continues working

1972

O'Keeffe began losing her central vision due to macular degeneration, but she continued to create art with assistance, producing watercolors, charcoal drawings, and a late series of clay pots. Her determination to keep working became an inspiration to many.

Publishes autobiography 'Georgia O'Keeffe'

1976

O'Keeffe published a best-selling autobiography, a lavishly illustrated volume combining her paintings, photographs, and reflections on her life and art. The book introduced her story to a broad public and became a classic of artist memoirs.

O'Keeffe dies in Santa Fe at age 98

Mar 6, 1986

Georgia O'Keeffe died in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at the age of 98. She was cremated and her ashes were scattered on the Pedernal, the mountain she painted throughout her life, which she called her own private mountain.

Georgia O'Keeffe Museum opens in Santa Fe

Jul 17, 1997

The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum opened in Santa Fe, New Mexico, becoming the first museum in the United States dedicated to a female artist. It houses the largest collection of O'Keeffe's work and continues to preserve and study her legacy.

Image source: Georgia O'Keeffe Museum

Key Facts

Georgia O'Keeffe was born on November 15, 1887, in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, and became known as the 'Mother of American Modernism.'
In 1916, photographer Alfred Stieglitz exhibited her work at his famous '291' gallery in New York, launching her career; they later married in 1924.
O'Keeffe is best known for her large-scale paintings of flowers, such as 'Black Iris' (1926), which she insisted were not sexual but simply depictions of flowers seen up close.
Her frequent visits to New Mexico beginning in 1929 profoundly influenced her art, inspiring iconic paintings of desert landscapes, animal skulls, and adobe architecture; she permanently moved there in 1949.
In 1977, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and in 1985 she was awarded the National Medal of Arts; she died on March 6, 1986, in Santa Fe at age 98.

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