Tuesday, June 18, 2013

GEORGIA O'KEEFFE...What a delight

        After several years of painting, I discovered Georgia O'Keeffe, and what a delight she was.  I love some of here statements and her body of work was amazing.
      
        If I may quote a paragraph  from the book O'Keeffe by Benedikt Taschen.  Her popularity and outstanding position in American art, are attributed not only to her painting, but to her remarkable personality.  
        Her career as an artist spanned over a half a century, a period ranging from the early days of modern realism to the abstract tendencies of the fifties and sixties.  The fame of her pictures, which resonate with excessive force of color and encoded sensuality has long since traveled across the Atlantic.


Oriental Poppies, 1928

        Her subjects, above all her magnificent flowers and her New Mexico landscapes, reflect her intimate bond with nature.

        In 1914 she had read Wassily Kandinsky's Concerning The Spiritual In Art, which had just been translated into English.  Kandinsky's fundamental thesis, namely that color and form should no longer be indebted to outward appearances in nature, but rather to the feelings and "inner world" of the artist, would have an enduring influence upon O'Keeffe's attitude to painting.


Blue Morning Glories

Bella-Donna

        O'Keeffe first came to the attention of the New York art scene in 1916.  She made large format paintings of enlarged blossoms, presenting them close up as if seen through a magnifying lens and New York buildings from the same era.  She became known as the Mother of American Modernism.


Blue and Green Music, 1919

        In 1930 O'Keeffe wrote to William Milliken, director of the Cleveland Art Museum: I know I can not paint a flower.  I can not paint the sun on the desert on a bright summer morning but maybe in terms of paint color I can convey to you my experience of the flower or the experience that makes the flower of significance to me at the particular time.


ENJOY THE JOURNEY MY FRIENDS...ZMAKEY

ZMAKEY ART STUDIO AND GALLERY
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