Georgia O'Keeffe facts: flowers, skylines, New Mexico

Georgia O'Keeffe facts trace an artist who turned flowers, skyscrapers, and desert landscapes into some of American modern art’s most memorable images. Born on November 15, 1887, and dying on March 6, 1986, she built a career that spanned seven decades and stayed largely independent of major art movements.

Why was Georgia O'Keeffe called the Mother of American modernism?

Georgia O'Keeffe was called the "Mother of American modernism" for her paintings of natural forms, especially flowers and desert-inspired landscapes. That title fits a life spent pushing familiar subjects into bold, carefully chosen shapes and colors. In 1922, she put that approach into words: "it is only by selection, by elimination, and by emphasis that we get at the real meaning of things."

Her work did not move neatly with any one art movement, even as her reputation grew over decades. The combination of flowers, city forms, and New Mexico scenery became the backbone of a career that lasted seven decades.

How did her flower paintings change American art?

By the mid-1920s, O'Keeffe had made about 200 flower paintings. Her first large-scale flower painting was Petunia, No. 2, painted in 1924 and first exhibited in 1925. That shift to large scale made the flower a subject with real visual power, not just a small study of nature.

The number itself matters too: about 200 flower paintings by the mid-1920s shows how central the subject was to her work. She kept returning to flowers while also building other bodies of work, including city scenes and landscapes.

Alfred Stieglitz exhibited ten of O'Keeffe's drawings at 291 in April 1916. That early exhibition helped place her work in a public art setting years before her flower series reached its full scale.

What happened after New York, and why did New Mexico matter?

After moving into the Shelton Hotel in 1925, O'Keeffe began a series of New York skyscraper and skyline paintings. The city gave her another subject with sharp lines and towering forms, very different from the curves of petals and leaves. The next year after 1928, she made her final New York City skyline and skyscraper paintings and traveled to New Mexico.

New Mexico became a major part of her art and life. In 1936, O'Keeffe completed Summer Days, one of her best-known paintings. She moved permanently to New Mexico in 1949, making the region not just a subject but a home base for her later years.

Which honors marked her career?

In 1946, O'Keeffe became the first woman artist to have a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. That exhibition placed her work in a major institutional setting and recognized the breadth of a career already stretching across several decades.

Her honors continued later in life. In 1977, President Gerald Ford presented O'Keeffe with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She died at the age of 98 in Santa Fe in 1986.

From early drawings at 291 to flower paintings, New York skylines, and New Mexico landscapes, Georgia O'Keeffe’s career unfolded in distinct chapters tied together by her eye for form. If you’ve followed the dates, paintings, and milestones, you’re ready for the quiz.