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The Arts Intel Report

Georgia O'Keeffe: To See Takes Time

Georgia O’Keeffe, Evening Star No.III, 1917.

Apr 9 – Aug 12, 2023
11 W 53rd St, New York, NY 10019, United States

When discussing Georgia O’Keeffe—sometimes called the “mother of American Modernism”—most are thinking of her over-scaled flowers, suggestively sexual and a shock to the senses. But her oeuvre was wide-ranging. O’Keeffe worked on drawings during much of her career, from early nudes and abstract charcoals executed between 1915 and 1918, to portraits and aerial views in the 1940s and 50s. In fact, it was her early charcoals that first captured the attention of Alfred Stieglitz. When O’Keeffe’s friend Anita Pollitzer presented the drawings to him at his 291 Gallery, he described them as the “purest, finest, sincerest things that had entered 291 in a long while.” At MoMA, 120 drawings, placed alongside key paintings, shed light on this little known facet of O’Keeffe’s practice. —Elena Clavarino

Photo: © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York