In fall 1908 O'Keeffe returned to Chicago, where she worked as an illustrator. She stopped painting for a period but was inspired to paint again after attending the University of Virginia Summer School in 1912 where Alon Bement introduced her to the cutting edge ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow during a course run.
Dow's teachings emphasised the creation of abstract art based on line, colour, mass, repetition, and symmetry and strongly influences O'Keeffe's teaching and her own creative process. O'Keeffe taught art in the public schools in Amarillo, Texas in 1912 until 1914. In 1914 and 1915 she studied teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York, and in fall 1915 she started teaching at Columbia College in Columbia, South Carolina.
During her time in Columbia O'Keeffe decided to pursue a career as a visual artist. She created series of abstract charcoal drawings and sent some of her drawings to her friend Anita Pollitzer, who passed them on to Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz and O'Keeffe began to correspond in 1916, Stieglitz was impressed by the drawings and began negotiations with O'Keeffe to display her work, she allowed him to exhibit 10 of the drawings, they were shown in a group exhibition that opened on June 23, 1916; more of her work is shown in an informal group show in August 1916.
In August 1916 she moved to Texas to take up a teaching position. She took leave from her teaching position in February 1918 and remained living in Texas. She received an invitation to move to New York to work from Stieglitz in May 1918, and she did so, arriving on June 10 1918. She would then begin a new life that would make her into one of the most important artist of the century.
New York
When O'Keeffe arrived in New York City in 1918, Stieglitz arranged for O'Keeffe to move into his niece's unoccupied studio apartment. In July of that year Stieglitz left his wife Emmeline Obermeyer Stieglitz to live with O'Keeffe. At that time he also began to photograph O'Keeffe. Forty-five of his photographs were exhibited in the Stieglitz retrospective exhibition held at the Anderson Galleries in February 1921. The images created a public sensation. In 1924, O'Keeffe and Stieglitz married, following the finalization of his divorce. O'Keeffe and Stieglitz spent their winters in Manhattan and their summers at the Stieglitz family house at Lake George in upstate New York.
From the time she arrived in New York she moved from charcoal and watercolour and began painting large canvases in oils and by the mid-1920s used large canvases for close-up objects.
She painted her first huge flower painting in 1924, Corn, Dark I, and they were first exhibited in 1925. Starting in 1926 she produced a significant body of works picturing urban landscapes and skyscrapers. Examples include City Night, Radiator Building-Night, New York and New York Night. These images focus on the structure and the time of day.
O'Keeffe's work received a great deal of attention and commanded high prices; in 1928 six of her calla lily paintings sold for US$25,000, which was at the time the largest sum ever paid for a group of paintings by a living American artist.
Corn, Dark I, 1924 City Night Radiator Building Calla Lily on Grey
Night
In May of 1929, Georgia would set out by train with her friend Beck Strand to Taos, New Mexico...a trip that would forever change her life.
New Mexico
Between 1929 and 1949 she travelled to New Mexico almost annually. During her second summer in New Mexico she began collecting and painting bones, and she painted many landscapes in New Mexico.
In late 1932 O'Keeffe developed increasingly severe psychological symptoms and was hospitalised in early 1933, she did not paint again until January 1934. In June of 1934 Georgia would visit Ghost Ranch for the first time, and knew immediately that she would live here. Some of her most famous works are the landscapes she painted of Ghost Ranch.
Ram's Head White Hollyhock Cow's Skull - Red, White
and Little Hills, 1935 and Blue 1930
In the late 1930's and 1940's O'Keeffe's reputation and popularity grew. She was given commissions and exhibitions in major galleries.
In 1946 Stieglitz died, O'Keeffe spent the next three years in New York settling his estate and in 1949 she moved to New Mexico permanently. Her works following Steiglitz death are regarded as majestic, but lacking the emotion that was present in her earlier works.
During the 1950s O'Keeffe produced a series of paintings featuring her 1958 painting about death Ladder to the Moon. Following her first travels outside the United States she produced a large series of paintings of clouds e.g. Sky above Clouds, which were the views from airplane windows.
Ladder to the Moon Sky Above the Clouds, 1962-1963
Toward the late 1960s, O'Keeffe's eyesight grew poor; by 1972 she could hardly see at all. O'Keeffe met potter Juan Hamilton in 1973 when he introduced himself to O'Keeffe and began doing household jobs for the artist. Hamilton eventually became O'Keeffe's very close companion. He assisted her with her final artworks, with the completion a book about her art called Georgia O’Keeffe published in 1976. She completed her final unassisted work in oil in 1972, and worked unassisted in watercolour and charcoal until 1978 and in graphite until 1984.
Georgia became increasingly frail in her late 90's and moved to Santa Fe where she would die on March 6, 1986, at the age of 98.
