Around 1920 Georgia O’Keeffe painted a number of oils exploring, as she later recalled, “the idea that music could be translated into something for the eye.” In Blue and Green Music, O’Keeffe’s colors and forms simultaneously suggest the natural world and evoke the experience of sound. She was drawn to the theories of the Russian Expressionist painter Vasily Kandinsky, who, in his 1912 text Concerning the Spiritual in Art, argued that visual artists should emulate music in order to achieve pure expression free of literary references.
Art Institute of Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago: Twentieth–Century Painting and Sculpture, selected by James N. Wood and Teri J. Edelstein (Art Institute of Chicago, 1996), p. 46 (ill.).
Barbara Buhler Lynes, “Georgia O’Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné,” (National Gallery of Art/Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation/Yale University Press, 1999) no. 1344 (vol. 1).
James W. Lane and Leo Katz, The Work of Georgia O’Keeffe: A Portfolio of 12 Paintings (New York, 1939), pl. 6.
Milton W. Brown, American Painting from the Armory Show to the Depression (Princeton, 1955), ill. p. 126.
Lloyd Goodrich and Doris Bry, Georgia O’Keeffe (New York, 1970), p. 32 (ill.)
Art Institute of Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago: Twentieth–Century Painting and Sculpture, selected by James N. Wood and Teri J. Edelstein (Art Institute of Chicago, 1996), p.46, ill.
Barbara Buhler Lynes, Georgia O’Keeffe Catalogue Raisonne Volume One (New Haven, Conneticut: Yale University Press; Washington, DC: National Gallery of American Art; Abiquiu, New Mexico: The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, 1999), p 185, no.344.
Judith A. Barter et al., American Modernism at the Art Institute of Chicago, From World War I to 1955, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2009), cat. 35.
Art Institute of Chicago, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jan 21–Feb 22, 1943, cat. 5 (ill. p. 11).
New York, Whitney Museum of Art, Georgia O’Keeffe Retrospective Exhibition, Oct 8–Nov 29, 1970, no. 23; the Art Institute of Chicago, Jan 1–Feb 7, 1971; San Francisco Museum of Art, Feb or Mar?–Apr 30, 1971.
London, Tate Gallery, Abstraction: Towards a New Art, Painting 1910–20, Feb 5–Apr 13, 1980, cat. 438.
London, Hayward Gallery, Georgia O’Keeffe: American and Modern, Apr 8–Jun 22, 1993; Mexico City, Palacio de Bellas Artes, Jul 15–Oct 1, 1993.
San Antonio, Texas, Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, O’Keeffe and Texas, Jan 27–Apr 5, 1998.
Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art, Alfred Stieglitz and Modern Art in America, Jan 28–Apr 22, 2001.
Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, Sounds and Lights, Sep 22–Jan 3, 2005.
Washington, DC, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Visual Music, 1905–2005; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Feb 13–May 22, 2005, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Jun 23–Sep 11, 2005.
Whitney Museum of American Art, Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction, Sep 17, 2009–Jan 17, 2010; Washington DC, Phillips Collection, Feb 6–May 9, 2012; Santa Fe, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, May 28–Sep 12, 2010 (New York only).
London, Tate Modern, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jul 6–Oct 30, 2016; Vienna, Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien, Dec 7, 2016–Mar 26, 2017; Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, Apr 22–Jul 30, 2017 (London only) cat. 28.
Cologne, Germany, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Es war einmal in Amerika – 300 Jahre US-amerikanische Kunst [Once Upon a Time in America: Three Centuries of American Art], Nov 23, 2018–Mar 24, 2019, cat. 105.
Madrid, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Georgia O’Keeffe, Apr 20–Aug 8, 2021, cat. 19 (ill.); Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, Sept 8–Dec 6, 2021; Basel, Fondation Beyeler, Jan 23–May 22, 2022.
Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986), New York and New Mexico, 1919–21 [O’Keeffe moved permanently to New Mexico in 1949]; given through the Alfred Stieglitz Collection to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1969.
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