Photo Via Museum of Wisconsin Art
Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986), In the Patio IX (1950)
Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986), In the Patio IX, 1950, oil on canvas mounted on panel, 30 x 40 in. Art Bridges.
The image is a striking one, and a departure from the Southwest imagery normally associated with Wisconsin-born artist Georgia O’Keeffe. Two fields of color—a supple looking gray foundation balanced by an ethereal sky-blue ceiling—are separated by a violent jet-black slash resembling a checkmark or perhaps an abstract blackbird in flight. Viewers may find it either settling or unsettling, based on their own life experiences. But the image’s energy and emotional drama can’t be denied.
Artist O’Keeffe, born to a farm family three miles outside of Sun Prairie, named the work In the Patio IX, one of 20 paintings in the series and the most abstract of them all. In fact, IX may mark O’Keeffe’s turning point to greater abstraction, according to Jane Aspinwall, deputy director of the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend, which is currently hosting the painting.
“I love the way (O’Keefe) can look at something quite ordinary and reimagine it in such an amazing way,” Aspinwall says. “Her ability to turn the ordinary into something extraordinary is just gripping.”
Wisconsin’s Best-Known Artist?
In the Patio IX, on loan from the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark., through its Art Bridges program, is the star of a one-canvas MOWA exhibit that opened July 1 but will run an entire year, closing on June 30, 2027. It’s one way the museum can compensate the fact that it has no Georgia O’Keefe artwork in its own collection despite the fact that she may be Wisconsin’s best known and most accomplished artist.
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“When the museum got its start in the 1960s, O’Keeffe paintings already were commanding top dollar, something we just couldn’t afford,” Aspinwall said.
MOWA’s attention to O’Keeffe will continue through 2027, when two more canvases will make an appearance, another through the Art Bridges program and one on loan from the Rahr West Art Museum in Manitowoc. Birch and Pine Tree II, which O’Keeffe painted in 1925, calls Rahr West home, but the painting is actually owned by the City of Manitowoc, Aspinwall says. The two additional paintings will arrive at different times but will likely overlap each other, she adds.
A graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, O’Keeffe emerged at a time when Modernism was beginning to dominate the art industry. She moved to New York and through her relationship and ultimate marriage to arts photographer Alfred Stieglitz she found herself amid male peers, one of few female artists of the day whose work was taken seriously, Aspinwall explains.
“She was in the right place at the right time with the right people,” Aspinwall explains. “She was in a circle of artistic intellectuals – they poured into her and she poured into them as well. She was considered seriously even though she was a female artist at the time when there weren’t many. She was considered one of the most influential Modernist painters.”
MOWA’s one-canvas O’Keeffe exhibit is currently on display at 205 Veterans Ave., West Bend. Info: wisconsinart.org.
The consummate repository of O’Keeffe’s art is in The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in downtown Santa Fe, New Mexico. It’s just 48 miles from the artist’s home and ranch in Abiquiu, which have been designated National Historic Landmarks and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Info: okeeffemuseum.org.
Closer to home, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art also has an Okeefe painting in its collection. Info: mmoca.org. The Milwaukee Art Museum houses 20+ Georgia O’Keeffe paintings. Info: mam.org.
