Explore Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings of New York

Georgia O’Keeffe is one of the most significant modern artists in American history

Known for her distinct style and outsider persona, O’Keeffe is a key figure in US art history and one of the few female artists to have a dedicated museum. Read her biography to learn more about how her rural upbringing led to her eventual worldwide fame.

Georgia O'Keeffe's subjects evolved based on the landscapes she lived in

Texas horizons, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico deserts are examples of the subjects O'Keeffe famously painted over the course of her life. While her style remained mostly consistent throughout her seven-decade career, her surroundings significantly changed the content of her artwork.

Tracking Georgia O’Keeffe paintings across America

Explore different significant locations where the painter’s works have lived, including the White House, from 1997 to 2004. Pick a nearby museum to witness the masterpieces up close.

Listen to the experiences of an art historian who met Georgia O'Keeffe

Wanda M. Corn wrote the biography "Georgia O'Keeffe: Living Modern" and recounts her experience interviewing the artist in New Mexico. Hear interesting details from an O'Keeffe expert, including specifics about her clothes, her home and her upbringing.

O’Keeffe’s journey to become an artist started at a young age in Wisconsin

In 1905, she left behind her life on the farm to attend art school in Chicago. While studying, the artist won the William Merritt Chase prize for a still life. Her style eventually evolved and caught the attention of important figures in the New York art scene.

O’Keeffe was part of a movement of American artists changing previous norms

One of the most recognizable names of the American modernism movement from the early 1900s, O’Keeffe’s portrayals of nature strayed from realism and prioritized emotional truth, using elements like bold colors and abstract shapes to capture the feeling of observing her subjects.

See the collection and interior of Santa Fe’s Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

The museum hosts hundreds of the artist’s paintings and many personal objects. Follow along while a curator shares context behind some of her iconic works and offers insights into O’Keeffe’s life and career.

Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings are often assumed to be sexual, though the artist claimed she was simply interested in highlighting the beauty of flowers that most people neglect

O’Keeffe’s first collection of charcoal drawings was influenced by Japanese artists

Prioritizing personal interpretations over literal ones, O’Keeffe’s abstract drawings challenged the classical approach to capturing nature in art. This initial set of drawings caught the attention of art dealer Alfred Stieglitz and forever changed the trajectory of her career.

In 1949, O’Keeffe moved to the tiny desert village of Abiquiu, New Mexico

After nearly 15 years of trying to buy an idyllic hacienda from the church, she succeeded and moved in in 1949. The three-acre property featured a view of the Chama River Valley, which inspired many of her paintings.

O’Keeffe made more than 2,000 pieces of art in her lifetime

See an interactive timeline that provides insight into just how prolific the artist was. Differentiated by year, the visualization shows when she was particularly active, and allows you to see the artwork from each year. Below is "Oriental Poppies" from 1928.

Georgia O'Keeffe and her sisters had an artistic rivalry

Despite their close relationship, a rift between the siblings emerged after Ida and Catherine, Georgia's younger sisters, began exhibiting their own paintings. Some also speculate that their dynamic was influenced by Georgia's husband, Alfred Stieglitz, who expressed romantic interest in Ida.

O’Keeffe discredited sexual interpretations of her flower paintings

In 1943, the artist famously explained her intention to call attention to flowers by making them large and detailed. O’Keeffe added that while she wanted people to notice her flowers, they ended up projecting their own associations that didn’t reflect her own ideas.

Georgia O’Keeffe and Frank Lloyd Wright were longtime friends

In the early 1930s, famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright invited Georgia O’Keeffe to become the master artist at the newly formed Taliesin Fellowship. O’Keeffe turned him down, but the letter sparked a decades-long friendship, rooted in their shared love for art and American landscapes, which continued until his death.

O’Keeffe collected animal skulls and bones for her art

O’Keeffe used bones as motifs in her work throughout her time in New Mexico. She famously stated, “The bones do not symbolize death to me. They are shapes that I enjoy … They're very lively.”

Alfred Stieglitz was a significant photographer in the American modern art movement

Stieglitz took hundreds of famous portraits of O’Keeffe and helped cement her reputation in New York by showcasing her work in his famed gallery. (This resource contains some artistic nudity.)

Japanese artwork often incorporates bold colors, clean lines, and natural subjects

While Japanese art is diverse and continues to adopt new styles and techniques, the Japanese approach to painting nature inspired Georgia O’Keeffe, who was known for depicting the environment in a detailed yet realistic manner. Below is "The Great Wave off Kanagawa," from 1931, by Hokusai.

'Ram’s Head, White Hollyhock—Hills' marked a shift in O’Keeffe’s life and work

After a severe drought in the 1930s killed many animals near her home, O’Keeffe started collecting and painting their skulls. Her new style was interpreted as surreal and even macabre by many, presenting a shocking turn from her lighthearted flower portraits.

Mabel Dodge Luhan facilitated art from Georgia O'Keeffe and others

Mabel Dodge Luhan was a writer, but she's better known art patron. She organized the 1913 "Armory Show" in New York that introduced European modernism to the US and invited artists (including Georgia O'Keeffe, Ansel Adams, Willa Cather, and Robinson Jeffers) to Taos, New Mexico, to cultivate a "Paris West."

See a gallery of art and architecture at New York City's UN building

The group's nearly 200 member states have contributed art and cultural experiences to the New York campus since the building's founding in 1950. This gallery hosts hundreds of photos of the art on the premises.

Sculptor and painter Charles M. Russell focused on the Old West

The Montana artist, known for his realistic portrayals of cowboys and Native American life, began to gain national attention after traveling to New York and establishing connections in the art world. Still, he spent most of his time in Great Falls, Montana, where he completed approximately 4,000 works.

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

Searching for 'The Great Gatsby' in Kentucky

F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel "The Great Gatsby" is usually associated with New York and its extremely wealthy enclaves, but this Atlas Obscura podcast tracks down another location Fitzgerald portrayed in the book: Louisville, Kentucky, the setting for Daisy and Tom Buchanan's wedding, as well as the place where Fitzgerald spent two miserable months during World War I.

Goya's 'The Second of May 1808' inspired Picasso's 'Guernica'

Goya’s painting commemorated Spanish resistance to Napoleon’s armies, making it a notable part of both the history of Spain and the romantic movement. But it took scholars over a century to realize the impact it had on Pablo Picasso, whose own anti-war work, “Guernica,” used Goya’s painting as a reference.

How Monet’s paintings changed the way we see London

Between 1899 and 1901, legendary French Impressionist painter Claude Monet produced over 100 paintings of London consistently shrouded in fog. Art historians claim this series left a permanent mark on how we perceive the capital city, inevitably layered in obscuring and dramatic mist. See some of the paintings and read more here.

Revisiting the milieu of the Greenwich Village music scene

Few neighborhoods of the world stand out as more productive of a robust music scene than New York City's Greenwich Village, the bohemian launchpad of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and other folk artists of the 1960s and '70s. Expert David Browne discusses why it became so significant in this episode of "Sound Opinions."

An indie film helped launch Basquiat's art career

Basquiat starred in “Downtown 81” as a struggling artist, which was not far from reality. In fact, the paintings that he carries throughout the film are some of his earliest works. The production gave him canvas and paint, which he used to create other paintings.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

Dorothy's famous entrance into Oz in 'The Wizard of Oz' relied on analog tricks, including a body double and sepia-toned paint, as much as it did on technology

See these 16 pieces of art evoking phobias of snakes, flying, spiders, and more. 

Poison ivy was sent to Europe in the 1600s as an exotic, ornamental oddity, where it was purposefully grown in the English royal gardens at Kew, the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, and a few other locations.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

See photos of Meteora, a mountainous site in central Greece, home to 14th-century monasteries perched atop soaring outcroppings.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

Comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, star of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Home Alone,' quit 'Saturday Night Live' after just one week to return to her old job.

Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' is infamous for having some of the highest industrial pollution, toxic air emissions, and cancer risks in the US.

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

Frank Lloyd Wright's houses are historically hard to sell because they're old, subject to local landmark commissions, and often unfashionable

Explore an interactive map of battles from the American Revolution, along with detailed summaries of each engagement

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

Hotels in Cannes, the glamorous city on the French Riviera, hire hawks to ward off seagulls during the city's famous film festival.

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

While El Niño moves warm Pacific Ocean waters east along the equator, La Niña moves them west, shifting where rainfall will become more common for months.