(1887-1986) Georgia O'Keeffe was born on a farm in Wisconsin on November 15, 1887. She studied art at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1905-1906, and at the Art Students League of New York in Manhattan from 1907-1908. She quickly mastered the techniques of "imitative realism" that made up the curriculum at that time. But this method of working did not hold her interest. O'Keeffe explained

It was in the fall of 1915 that I first had the idea that what I had been taught was of little value to me except for the use of my materials as a language -- charcoal, pencil, pen and ink, watercolor, pastel, and oil. I had become fluent with them when I was so young that they were simply another language that I handled easily. But what to say with them? I had been taught to work like others and after careful thinking I decided that I wasn't going to spend my life doing what had already been done.¹

O'Keeffe created a series of abstract charcoal drawings. Someone sent them to renowned photographer Alfred Stieglitz, and he hung them in his avant-garde gallery, 291. In 1918, Mr. Stieglitz offered her financial support to come to New York and Paint for a year, and she moved there from Texas. The two were married in 1924. From 1923 until his death in 1946, Mr. Stieglitz worked effectively to promote his wife's work.

In 1929, O'Keeffe spent the first of many summers in New Mexico.

The summer of 1929 ... I had the house that D.H. Lawrence had the summer before he went to Italy. Mabel's house was much larger and a little higher and between the two was an alfalfa field like a large green saucer. On one side of the field was a path lined with flowers.... (O)ne day walking the path I picked a large blackish red hollyhock and some bright dark blue larkspur that immediately went into a painting -- and then another painting.²

In 1949, three years after her husband's death, O'keeffe moved from New York to New Mexico. She painted in oils until her eyesight began to fail in the 1970's, at which time she began to work in clay. She died at the age of 98.

Georgia O'Keeffe Prints & Posters

References:
¹Georgia O'Keeffe: A Studio Book by Georgia O'Keeffe; (1976) The Viking Press; New York, NY
²op. cit.
O'Keeffe Museum