Modern and Contemporary Art

Georgia O’Keeffe’s print suite Drawings - The Complete Set of Ten includes offset lithographic reproductions of some of the artist’s first abstract drawings created in 1915. At that time, the artist had finished art school and was living in the Texas Panhandle, having temporarily given up painting in favor of a teaching position. Of these early forays into abstraction the artist noted “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say in any other way - things I had no wish for.” [1] 

Later that year, O’Keeffe sent the drawings to a friend in New York who in turned showed them to Alfred Stieglitz. The renowned photographer and gallerist immediately recognized their quality and exhibited them the following year in his gallery. The 1916 exhibition was the beginning of a career that established Georgia O’Keeffe as one of the foremost artists of the 20th century. Seven of the drawings reproduced in the present suite were included in the exhibition, and three others were executed later. Two of these are not abstractions, including Plate VII, “Banana Flower” and Plate X, “Rams Horns,” which remind us of the artist’s keen awareness of nature throughout her prolific and accomplished career. 

[1] Georgia O’Keefe, as quoted by Lloyd Goodrich in his introductory text, Georgia O'Keeffe Drawings, New York: Atlantis Editions, 1968.