Philadelphia, PA
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Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz
Four recently acquired drawings by
Georgia O'Keeffe will be among the highlights of Georgia O'Keeffe and
Alfred Stieglitz, an installation of work by the legendary painter and
portraits of her taken by her husband, the photographer and gallery owner
Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946). On view in the Museum's Eglin Gallery (165)
from February 7 through May 23, 1999, Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz
will include nine paintings and drawings by O'Keeffe (1887-1986) and ten
of Stieglitz's renowned photographs of her spanning over a decade in their
tumultuous relationship. The installation has been organized by Matthew
S. Witkovsky, the Museum's Acting Assistant Curator of Photographs, and
coincides with the Philadelphia-area premiere of Stieglitz Loves O'Keeffe,
a play starring Stacey Keach and Margot Kidder that will be presented at
the Annenberg Center between April 19 and 26, 1999. 
Acquired in 1997 from The Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation,
the four spectacular drawings now making their debut at the Museum came
directly from the artist's personal collection. O'Keeffe gave the title
"Special" to two of the drawings, indicating the particular significance
she ascribed to them within her body of work. Special No. 15 (1916),
a very early charcoal drawing of the Palo Duro Canyon in Texas, not only
conveys a remarkable and evocative sense of place, but also includes many
of the formal elements that would recur throughout O'Keeffe's long career.
Of the pencil drawing Special No. 40 (1934), O'Keeffe wrote: "This
is from the sea - a shell - and paintings followed. Maybe not as good as
this drawing."
Also in this group of O'Keeffe's drawings is a rare portrait
of her friend the African American painter Beauford Delaney from the 1940s
and a 1959 charcoal drawing of a riverbed in a desert, inspired by sketches
the artist made during one of her first airplane flights. The Museum is
fortunate to own seven paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe, five of which will
be included in the installation. Among them are Orange and Red Streak
(1919), From the Lake, No. 3 (1924), and Birch and Pine Tree,
No. 1 (1925), three of four paintings bequeathed by O'Keeffe to the
Museum in 1987.
Among the photographs of Georgia O'Keeffe by Alfred Stieglitz
are four portraits dating from 1918 to 1920, the first years of their relationship
in New York City. Two of these works are exquisite, close, and intimate
studies of her hands. Stieglitz paid loving tnbute here to what he saw as
O'Keeffe's unconventional beauty, her profound sense of womanhood, and her
identity as an artist. Later, in a study of O'Keeffe's hands from 1930,
the changed terms of their relationship can be seen in the object she cradles:
a bleached animal skull from the Southwest of the sort that would come to
symbolize her art. Other portraits and photographs from the early to mid-1920s
take as their setting the Stieglitz family home at Lake George in upstate
New York, where Stieglitz pursued in photography the abstraction of natural
forms that O'Keeffe had been exploring in her drawings and paintings.
From top to bottom: Georgia O'Keeffe, Red Hills and Bones, 1941, oil on canvas, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Alfred Stieglitz Collection; Georgia O'Keeffe, Peach and Glass, 1927, oil on canvas, Philadelphia Museum of Art, gift of Dr. Herman Lorber; Georgia O'Keeffe, Beauford Delaney, c. 1940s, 24 3/4 x 18 5/8 inches, charcoal on paper, Philadelphia Museum of Art, purchased with Museum funds, funds contributed by various donors and gift of the Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation, photo by: Graydon Wood; Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe After Return from New Mexico, 1929, 3 1/8 x 4 5/8 inches, gelatin silver·print, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Alfred Stieglitz Collection, purchased with the gift (by exchange) of Dr. and Mrs. Paul Todd Makler, the Lynne and Harold Honickman Fund for Photography, the Alice Newton Osborn Fund, the Lola Downin Peck Fund, funds contributed by Mr. and Mrs. John J. F. Sherrerd, Lynne and Harold Honickman, the J. J. Medveckis Foundation, George M. Cheston, M. Todd Cooke and the gift of the Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation, photo by Andrew Harkins;Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, 1924, gelatin silver print, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Alfred Stieglitz Collection, purchased with the gift (by exchange) of Dr. and Mrs. Paul Todd Makler, the Lynne and Harold Honickman Fund for Photography, the Alice Newton osborne Fund, the Lola Downin Peck Fund, funds contributed by Mr. and Mrs. John J. F. Sherrerd, Lynne and Harold Honickman, the J. J. Medveckis Foundation, M. Todd Cooke, and gift of the Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation
rev. 11/26/10
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