Georgia O'Keeffe in Canyon
Canyon, Randall County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Renowned artist Georgia Totto O'Keeffe (1887-1986) was born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin to Francis and Ida (Totto) O'Keeffe. The family moved to Virginia, where O'Keeffe and her siblings attended school. She studied art at various schools before enrolling in the Art Institute of Chicago and later the Art Students League in New York City. She then worked as a commercial artist before attending classes at the University of Virginia. In order to gain teaching experience, she taught art in Amarillo between 1912 and 1914. The Texas Panhandle attracted her as an artist because of "the openness. The dry landscape. The beauty of that wild world." In 1914, O'Keeffe returned to the East, studying at Columbia University in New York, and teaching in Virginia and South Carolina. At Columbia University, she met Arthur Wesley Dow, who greatly altered her vision of art. Influenced by east Asian painters and the British Arts and Crafts movement, he inspired her to approach painting in a more abstract manner. O'Keeffe returned to Texas in 1916 as a faculty member at West Texas State Normal College, now West Texas A&M University, where she held classes in Old Main. Inspired by the landscape, particularly Palo Duro Canyon, she began incorporating themes from nature in her work, moving away from Representationalism. O'Keeffe showed many of her Texas pieces at Alfred Stieglitz's New York City gallery in 1917. The following year, she moved to New York and in 1924 married Stieglitz, a noted photographer. Both artists produced large bodies of acclaimed work. Following Stieglitz's death in 1946, O'Keeffe moved to New Mexico, where she continued to explore her creative vision and unique style, shaped in part by her Canyon years. Today, she remains a major influence in American Art.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Before she became one of America's most celebrated artists, Georgia O'Keeffe taught in the Texas Panhandle, drawn by what she called "the openness. The dry landscape." From 1916 to 1918 she taught at West Texas State Normal College in Canyon, where the sweep of Palo Duro Canyon pushed her toward the bold abstraction that would define her work. She exhibited her Texas pieces in New York in 1917 and carried the region's influence for the rest of her life.
Why it matters
The Panhandle years were a crucible for a distinctly American modernist vision that reshaped 20th-century art.
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Related people
- · Georgia O'Keeffe
- · Alfred Stieglitz
Themes & tags
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