Photograph by Alfred Stieglitz, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) is one of the 20th century’s greatest American painters. She was a pioneer of modernism, known for her paintings of skyscrapers, animal skulls and Western landscapes, but most especially for her enchanting paintings of flowers, now a deeply ingrained part of American culture, so much so that they often eclipse her other very colorful accomplishments.
In 1946, O’Keeffe became the first woman to earn a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa). 24 years later, a Whitney Museum of American Art retrospective exhibit introduced her work to a new generation. 15 years after that, O’Keeffe was included in the first group of artists chosen to receive the newly founded National Medal of Arts for her contribution to American culture.
In 1924, O’Keeffe married famous photographer Alfred Stieglitz. Their artistic, professional and personal relationship lasted until he died in 1946. She survived him by 40 years.
They both also had relationships with others; he with women, she with both women and men. At least once they were lovers with the same woman, including Rebecca Strand, the wife of the famous photographer Paul Strand and an artist in her own right. She and O’Keeffe remained friends and lovers for many years.
O’Keeffe married Stienglitz, not for love, but as a mentor and as a business arrangement. For the most part her male friends were either married or gay.
O’Keeffe had a thing for couples, same-sex or straight. One of her crushes was on Margery Latimer and Blanche Matthias. Latimer was in NYC writing a novel and Matthias had repeatedly urged Stieglitz to introduce her to his wife. They ended up becoming great friends and lovers, going out to all-night bohemian parties like those thrown by writer/photographer Carl Van Vechten and his actor wife Fania Marinoff, who were both gay.
Juan Hamilton was a broke 27 year old when he first walked into O’Keeffe’s secluded studio Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, hoping she might give him a job. It was 1973, and O’Keeffe, at 85 years old, still had her beauty (famously captured by Stieglitz, who caused a sensation when he exhibited dozens of nude portraits of her in 1921, while he was still married to another woman), but she was going blind.
O’Keeffe with Hamilton (1983), photograph by William Clift via YouTube
Hamilton became her assistant, companion, and representative for her remaining years. O’Keeffe died in Santa Fe in 1986. She was 98 years old when she left this world. She left most of her estate to Hamilton, which prompted a law suit by O’Keeffe’s family.
Hamilton gave most of his inheritance to the museums and institutions in her original will.
In 1997, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum opened in Santa Fe, with its first exhibition curated by Hamilton. It is the first art museum dedicated to the work of an American woman artist.
Oriental Poppies, 1927
