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Abstraction and O'Keeffe

Introduction to Georgia O'Keeffe's abstract art works.

Georgia O'Keeffe and Abstract Art

It is surprising to me to see how many people separate the objective from the abstract. Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or a tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they say something. For me that is the very basis of painting. The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint. — Georgia O'Keeffe, 1976

Georgia O'Keeffe, Georgia O'Keeffe (New York: Viking Press, 1976), n.p. 

 

Georgia O’Keeffe began creating abstract works of art in 1915 with a series of innovative charcoal drawings and worked in abstraction throughout her career to express herself and depict her surroundings and subjects. Abstract art employs color, shape, and line to create compositions that are free from a realistic visual depiction of the world.

Vertical charcoal drawing with strong thick black line that runs diagonal across the page from the lower left increasing in thickness to the upper right. Through the middle is a more delicate curved line and a spiraling circular shape in the middle crossed by the main black line.
Large canvas of aerial view of the sky from above the cloud level. To the point of the horizon at 2/3 of the canvas the sky is vibrant blue dotted with islands of white clouds like icebergs in the sea. The top 1/3 is the pale horizon fading from salmon peach to grey-blue to the edge of the canvas.
Vertical canvas with cloudy blue, green, and cream colored formation filling the bottom half of the painting. Hovering over this in a black background is a foggy streak of red. The upper half of the canvas is traversed by a lightening bolt zig-zag shape in greenish white that cuts through the blue-black of the background.
Vertical canvas - abstracted arial view of an olive green river zig-zagging through a salmon-pink colored ground.
Adobe wall with door and a blue sky above.
Spiraling grey-white tones flowing outward from the center, as if looking into a rose from an aerial view. Subject not readily identifiable as a rose as the
Vertical watercolor with a dominant blackish snake shape that traverses down the page forming from a dark cloudy area in the upper left corner and flowing downward to the bottom of the page ending in red. This is placed within an area of bleeding blue, yellow, and transparent ground that fills to the edges of the page.

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