Georgia O'Keeffe

Pink Tulip 1926 Georgia O'Keeffe The beautiful weather Tuesday enticed us to attend the Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit at one of San Diego's crown jewels, San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park. The two lower paintings by O'Keeffe are property of the San Diego Museum of Art and were separate of her exhibit.

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I found the life of Georgia O'Keeffe very interesting. She gifted a friend with a work of her art. The friend in turn sent it to Arthur Stieglitz of New York who displayed it. When Georgia learned of this, she went to New York and ordered the work removed. Arthur denied her request. One year later Georgia was given an exhibit of her works by Stieglitz. Seven years later she married Arthur Stieglitz who was 23 years her senior. He was born in 1864 and following a marriage of 22 years, died in 1946. Arthur was responsible for advocating the advancement of photography as a work of art.

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O'Keeffe expressed the mysteries she found in both minuscule and the cosmic through the same process of magnification. Her treatment of the miniature in nature exploding the portions of the form and focusing on its parts allowed O'Keeffe to isolate and capture the beauty of the microcosmic world of plants and flowers.

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Her earliest paintings of flowers began when she visited the Lake George, New York home of the family of Alfred Stieglitz and first saw Cana Lilies growing in the gardens. Georgia born in 1887 died in 1986 at the age of 99 years old in Santa Fe, New Mexico.