Georgia O'Keeffe died on this day in 1986. Which of her works do you like best and why?

Born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, in 1887, O’Keeffe grew up in Virginia and first studied painting at the Art Institute of Chicago. Initially, she embraced a highly abstracted, urban style of art.

She later moved to New York city’s Greenwich Village bohemian community (see early urban work) where she thrived within the growing community of abstract expressionists. Beginning in 1912, though, she began spending time in Texas and she became the head of the art department at the West Texas State Normal College in 1916.

O’Keeffe’s time in Texas sparked her enduring fascination with the stark and powerful western landscape. She began to paint more representational images that drew on the natural forms of the canyons and plains that surrounded her. O’Keeffe’s paintings of cow skulls and calla lilies gained particular attention and won her an enthusiastic audience.

Her marriage to the New York art dealer and photographer Alfred Stieglitz brought O’Keeffe back to the northeast. For a decade, she divided her time between New York City and their home in Lake George, New York (see upstate work).

Photo: Stieglitz and O’Keffe

Note: O’Keeffe’s footsteps in Upstate New York are Nearly Erased.

In 1919, O’Keeffe made a brief visit to the small New Mexican village of Taos, and she returned for a longer stay in 1929. Attracted to the clear desert light and snow-capped mountains, she began returning to New Mexico every summer to paint. O’Keeffe found a vibrant and supportive community among the artists that had been flocking to Taos and Santa Fe since the 1890s (see Taos Art Colony).

Photo: Pals – Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams

O’Keeffe has been recognized as the “Mother of American modernism”.