Bank Austria Kunstforum | Georgia O'Keeffe

Next to Frida Kahlo Georgia O’Keefe is probably the most famous woman artist of the twentieth century, yet the opportunities of seeing her work in Europe are rare. O’Keeffe’s works are distributed among the leading US museums and collections, where they enjoy iconic status. In autum 2014 the flower painting Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 (1932) was sold for $44,4 million at a Sotheby’s auction as the most expensive painting by a female artist which will also be shown at the exhibition in Vienna.

During 2016/17, the Bank Austria Kunstforum, in cooperation with the Tate Modern, London and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, is planning the hitherto largest O’Keeffe exhibition tour. For the first time in Austria this show will be giving a comprehensive and insightful view into the artist’s oeuvre of paintings. In addition, a selection of photographs will be on show, taken of her by her husband Alfred Stieglitz and other photographers, among them Ansel Adams and Paul Strand, which underscore the not always problem-free, virtually mythical fusion of work and person.

Influenced by Wassily Kandinsky and originating in the 1910s in the circle of the avant-garde gallery 291 founded by Stieglitz, O’Keeffe’s modernist early work counts among the outstanding contributions to “spiritual” abstraction. O’Keeffe’s monumental flower pictures of the 1920s evoke strongly sexualising interpretations and are among the most popular and thrilling subjects in her entire oeuvre. Her sharp focus, her adherence to detail and her close-up perspective show how O’Keeffe translates photographic characteristics into the genuine zone of painting. A further focus lies on the well-nigh abstract, large-format landscapes produced in New Mexico, which anticipate art trends of Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. The exhibition accentuates O’Keeffe’s singular position in bridging the gap between European modernism and American post-war abstraction, also her constant role as intermediary between reference to nature and abstraction, between organic and geometric elements, between feeling and de-personalisation.