Who is Georgia O146;Keefe

Why is Georgia O8217; Keefe so big; she just paints pretty pictures of flowers?8221; A friend once said to me perplexed. I understood her confusion but somewhere I wanted to tell her that she hadn8217;t taken a closer look at the paintings.

Why is Georgia O8217; Keefe so big; she just paints pretty pictures of flowers?8221; A friend once said to me perplexed. I understood her confusion but somewhere I wanted to tell her that she hadn8217;t taken a closer look at the paintings. The whirls and petals are not just what they appear, since the resemblance to the delicate labia and the clitoris is very evident after the first glance. The paintings are beautiful and poetic and raise to a pedestal those regions of the female anatomy that have remained in the dark, as far as art is concerned.

Given that much of art, across the world, is rife with phallic imagery, this is perhaps one of the few artists who have provided women with a similar heroic image of their fundamental cores. O8217;Keefe8217;s intentions are not to flaunt and the

subtle innuendos in her works are often missed, but her paintings are now the stuff of legend, especially in circles of feminist women.

In America, especially the South, everyone is pretty familiar with her name and she is now a major figure in the international art scene. Inspired by Mexican art, O8217;Keefe paints flowers, rocks, shells, animal bones and landscapes. When she was a student at Town Hall School in Wisconsin, O8217;Keef received her first tuitions in water colours from Sara Mann. This set the foundation for her artistic journey, and in 1905, O8217;Keef enrolled at the School of Art Institute, Chicago. She then attended the Art Students League in New York City, where she won the Leagues merit a scholarship to Lake George. It is here that she met her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, a photographer.

After her scholarship, O8217;Keef was disheartened with her work and took a sabbatical, keeping herself busy with commercial art and then teaching in a school. It was only in 1912 that she picked up her brush again and created some of the art for which she became a famous painter.

Stieglitz discovered her work at that time, set up her own studio in New York and soon got married. It was around this time that Stieglitz created some monumental portraits of the artist and immortalised her image. On her part, O8217;Keefe began to explore her art and travelled to various places in America and Mexico.

It was only after a nervous breakdown in 1933 that O8217;Keefe discovered herself in solitude. On the Ghost Ranch Abiquiu she painted some of her most famous landscapes and flowers.

Demystify art, email: georgina.maddoxexpressindia.com