Georgia O'Keeffe is famous for her flowers, but a new exhibit at the Detroit Institute of Arts sets them aside to focus on the barns, skyscrapers and adobe buildings she painted.
The show, "Georgia O'Keeffe: Architecture," treats those works as autobiography. Curator Ben Colman said it centers on the places where she lived and worked and that shaped her as a person and as a painter.
Colman acknowledged that a barn is a surprise for many people who know O'Keeffe for her flowers, landscapes or bones. He said flower pictures account for only about 10 percent of her artwork.
Curiously, flower pictures represent only about 10% of her artwork.
Ben Colman, curator
Over her career, O'Keeffe completed about 140 architectural paintings.
From the farm to Manhattan
Born in 1887 on a Wisconsin dairy farm, she drew on that rural setting as a source of inspiration.
With "My Shanty, Lake George," Colman said, she set out to challenge what she considered misunderstandings of her art. He described her as very conscious of choosing subjects that would not be seen as typically feminine.
She later lived in Manhattan in the 1920s, as skyscrapers began to remake the city. Colman said she paid close attention to what she called sky shapes, the negative space of sky, moon and clouds around the towers.
She pays special attention to what she called the sky shapes, the negative space of sky, moon, and clouds that she saw around the buildings
Ben Colman, curator
Adobe and desert light
O'Keeffe eventually moved to New Mexico, where adobe structures and desert landscapes surrounded her. Colman said her architectural paintings ask questions about the places she lived, and about the light, atmosphere and texture of the buildings.
She died in 1986 at 98, leaving a vast body of work that secured her place in American art.
