Georgia O'Keeffe, Ram's Horns II, c.1949, from Some Memories of Drawings, 1974 © Georgia O'Keeffe Museum/DACS, London 2021. Photo: Anna Arca.
Georgia O'Keeffe: Memories of Drawings is a Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition which presents a remarkable collection of O’Keeffe’s work. The exhibition showcases 21 photogravures of drawings produced by the artist between 1915-1963, reflecting the period in which she established herself as a major figure in American Modernism. With no artworks by O’Keeffe held in UK public collections, this exhibition is a rare chance to see her work in person outside the US – the Winchester show is the penultimate stop on the exhibition’s UK tour.
Renowned for her distinctive balance of abstraction with figuration, as well as her tenacity in pursuing her innovative style, Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) was one of the most important artists in 20th century American art. Her iconic works of organic forms, which include flowers and bones, surreal abstractions, rural landscapes and urban cityscapes uniquely captured the experience of her environment and broke new ground for women artists.
Georgia O'Keeffe, Banana Flower, 1933, from Some Memories of Drawings, 1974 © Georgia O'Keeffe Museum/DACS, London 2021. Photo: Anna Arca.
Although best known as a painter, drawing was central to O’Keeffe’s practice. It was her pivotal charcoal abstractions which secured her inaugural exhibitions in 1916-17, organised by the prominent photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz, who later became her husband. She used drawing as a language to evoke important moments and emotions – the curve of a flower petal, a desert horizon, the wave of one's hair, or the flow of a winding road.
The works in Georgia O'Keeffe: Memories of Drawings demonstrate the artist’s distinctive style, and also chart the key trajectories and motifs in her practice. The exhibition includes nine prints of her earliest charcoal abstracts alongside works originally rendered in pencil and watercolour. These capture subjects ranging from the artist’s early morning excursions with her sister to surreal still life of seashells, banana flowers and animal horns. Together, these important works reflect a formative collection that O’Keeffe produced with her agent and long-term friend, Doris Bry.
Displayed alongside her drawings, exhibition texts recall the artist’s own commentary – sourced from a fragmentary but often poetic text she published alongside the collection – about why she made these drawings.
Georgia O'Keeffe: Memories of Drawings is a Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition from the Southbank Centre, London. It opens in The Gallery at The Arc, Winchester, on Saturday 26 August and runs until Wednesday 15 November