Unexpected O'Keeffe: The Virginia Watercolors and Later Paintings

The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia

 Oct. 19, 2018-Jan. 27, 2019

 

This rare exhibition explores Georgia O’Keeffe’s watercolor studies produced during her time at the University of Virginia (UVA) and will include several key sketches and paintings as well as other works demonstrating her developing style. While in Charlottesville in the summers from 1912 to 1916, O’Keeffe displayed an early attraction to modernism and abstraction, using her surroundings on the Grounds of UVA to investigate simplified and refined compositions. During her time at UVA, O’Keeffe’s work showed a dramatic shift to the ideas of modernism. In 1912 she took a summer course taught by Alon Bement who introduced her to the revolutionary ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow, his colleague. Dow encouraged imagination and self-expression versus literal interpretation.

Untitled (Rotunda -University of Virginia) Scrapbook U of V, 1912-1914 Georgia O’Keeffe Watercolor on paper 11 7/8 x 9 (30.16 x 22.86) Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation (2006.05.608) Copyright Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

Significance: This is the first time these watercolors have been on view outside the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Unexpected O'Keeffe: The Virginia Watercolors and Later Paintings emphasizes an understudied period of the artist’s development. The exhibition is a catalyst for new scholarship on this period in O’Keeffe’s life through a graduate seminar led by Elizabeth Hutton Turner, professor of modern art at the University of Virginia. 

Georgia O’Keeffe. Anything , 1916. Oil on Board, 20 x 15 3/4 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. [2006.5.29]

Curator: Unexpected O'Keeffe: The Virginia Watercolors and Later Paintings is organized by Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Professor of Modern Art at the University of Virginia and Matthew McLendon, J. Sanford Miller Family Director of The Fralin Museum of Art with contributions from Professor Turner’s students, and works on loan from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, The Phillips Collection, and the Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg.