Past Exhibition

Radical Abstraction

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December 2, 2022 - November 4, 2023

Santa Fe, NM

Georgia O'Keeffe Museum

Timed tickets required for all visitors. Free for members.

Large canvas of mostly white with an abstracted reference to the black door from the adobe wall of her Abiquiu home. The door is represented by a large black rectangle in the center, with line of grey-blue squares suggesting the stepping stones along the path. Along the top and bottom edges of the canvas are lines of a darker blue grey, thin on top, thicker along the bottom.

With a career spanning over six decades, Georgia O’Keeffe has been celebrated for her paintings of flowers, animal bones, and landscapes. Less well known is her depth of engagement with abstraction. The paintings in this exhibition, drawn from the Museum’s collection, range from pioneering early abstractions to late works that exemplify the synthesis of abstraction and nature in O’Keeffe’s art. This exhibition invites visitors to explore O’Keeffe’s rejection of “realism” in favor of a radical, hybrid mode of representation.

Georgia O’Keeffe. My Last Door, 1952-1954. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
“Nothing is less real than realism. Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of things.”

Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O’Keeffe. The Beyond, 1972. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
he viewer appears to be looking at the canyon from an unusual angle, perhaps from below. The image could also be the reflection of the cliffs on the surface of the river. Cliffs rise from all sides, and a triangular patch of light sky fills the center of the image.
Georgia O’Keeffe. On the River I, ca. 1965. Oil on canvas, 30 1/8 x 40 1/16 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. [2006.5.392]



The painting conveys a simplified rendering of a patio. A light brown stripe runs along the lower portion of the scene. The building is painted in a slightly darker brown, while a square opening in the center of the building is an even deeper shade of brown. A strip of blue sky parallels the upper edge of the canvas.

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