Detroit Institute of Arts opens Georgia O’Keeffe architecture exhibit

Georgia O’Keeffe built a career known for flowers, landscapes, and paintings of bones, but a new exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Arts reframes her artistic legacy through the built environment. Titled “Georgia O’Keeffe: Architecture,” the show curates approximately 140 architectural paintings completed over the artist’s lifetime, presenting barns, skyscrapers, and adobe structures through an autobiographical lens. CBS News reported that while flower pictures represent only about ten percent of her total artwork, buildings and structures offer a direct look into the places where she lived and worked.

Curator Ben Colman noted that structures like barns come as a surprise to many gallery visitors who associate the painter with flowers, landscapes, or bones. The exhibition traces her trajectory from a Wisconsin dairy farm where she was born in 1887 to the skyscrapers of Manhattan and the adobe landscapes of New Mexico. These formative years preceded her recognition as a full citizen, anchoring her early career in an era when women who painted were commonly dismissed as hobbyists before marriage and motherhood.

Wisconsin Farms and Texas Panhandles Shape Early Modernism

O’Keeffe declared to her high school classmates in 1905 that she would give up everything for her art, embarking on a path of study in Chicago and New York followed by teaching stints in South Carolina and Texas. The wide-open spaces of the Texas panhandle echoed her childhood on a Wisconsin dairy farm, inspiring her nascent abstract expressionism and encouraging her to strip away the impositions of formal education. Those early years brought her briefly to New Mexico for the first time, establishing a geography that would ultimately be synonymous with her final years.

When O’Keeffe painted “My Shanty, Lake George” in 1922, she actively sought to challenge what she considered misunderstandings of her art. Ben Colman explained to CBS News that she was very conscious, and maybe self-conscious, about selecting subjects that would not be perceived as typically feminine in their composition.

Manhattan Skyscrapers and the Negative Space of Sky

Relocating to Manhattan during the 1920s placed O’Keeffe amid a city where skyscrapers were redefining the urban landscape. She paid special attention to what she called sky shapes, the negative space of sky, moon, and clouds that she saw around the buildings, according to CBS News. She sent her works from this period to a friend, who showed the collection to photographer and curator Alfred Stieglitz, the man who introduced European modernism to America at his 291 gallery.

Stieglitz exhibited her charcoal drawings in 1915 before they had even met. A year later they would meet. By 1919, Stieglitz and O’Keeffe were living together. While the couple split their time between New York and a family cottage on Lake George, O’Keeffe still craved the open spaces that spurred her earliest work. By the late 1920s, she started travelling again, at least partly in response to the fact the much older Stieglitz had found himself yet another ingénue, Dorothy Norman.

O'Keeffe Paints Adobe Structures in New Mexico

O’Keeffe eventually moved to New Mexico, where she found herself surrounded by adobe structures and desert landscapes. Her architectural paintings from this period, including “Taos Pueblo” (1929/1934), examine the qualities of light, atmosphere, and texture of the buildings that she painted. Over the course of her career, O’Keeffe would go on to complete about 140 architectural paintings, where she’s asking questions about the nature of the places where she lived.

O’Keeffe died in 1986 at 98 years old, her legacy grounded in a vast body of work, cementing her presence in American art. A century after her work was first displayed, O’Keeffe has finally become an artist for whom the work speaks for itself, allowing the myths surrounding her work and her life to dissolve against her true legacy.

Frequently Asked Questions About Georgia O’Keeffe’s Architecture Exhibition

Where is the Georgia O’Keeffe architecture exhibition currently located?

The exhibition titled “Georgia O’Keeffe: Architecture” is hosted at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

What percentage of Georgia O’Keeffe’s artwork features flowers?

Flower pictures represent only about ten percent of her artwork.

When did Alfred Stieglitz first exhibit Georgia O’Keeffe’s artwork?

Alfred Stieglitz showed her charcoal drawings in 1915, before ever meeting her.