Christie’s 19 November 2014
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CALLA LILIES
$2,500,000 - $3,500,000
Georgia O’Keefe’s Calla Lilies is one of eight sophisticated, architectural blooms in O’Keefe’s Calla Lily series. Calla Liliesreflects the pictorial strategies that O’Keeffe developed as an avant-garde American Modernist and her interest in a type of heightened realism that pushes an image to the edge of abstraction. As with all of O’Keeffe’s work, Calla Lilies seamlessly combines sensuous beauty with underlying formalist concerns to create a psychologically compelling work that feels as contemporary today as when it was first painted.
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GEORGIA O'KEEFFE (1887-1986)
GEORGIA O'KEEFFE (1887-1986)
HILLS AND MESA TO THE WEST
$2,500,000 - $3,500,000
Belonging to a seminal group of works depicting the red hills near O’Keeffe’s home at Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico, Hills and Mesa to the West is a superb example of the artist’s skillful use of color and light. Painted in 1945, this painting is both an objective interpretation of a desert landscape and a meditation on form and color. Composed of brilliant and varying hues, the work is also a testament to O’Keeffe’s passion for color and her unique ability to capture the dramatic and transitory hues of the Southwest at various times of the day.
ABSTRACTION
$600,000 - $800,000
Sotheby's May 21, 2014
GEORGIA O'KEEFFE
1887 - 1986
1887 - 1986
LAKE GEORGE BARN (LAKE GEORGE BARNS)
Estimate
2,500,000 — 3,500,000
LOT SOLD. 2,965,000
Christie’s 5 DECEMBER 2013
Two works by Georgia O’Keeffe were among the highlights of the sale, both of which depict calla lilies, the flower with which the artist is most closely associated.
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Two Calla Lilies Together (estimate: $800,000-1,200,000) is a pastel that was completed in a series of seven works in 1923, all of which depict this particular flower. This example, however, is the only work from the series to depict two flowers and can be seen as the culmination of O’Keeffe’s first foray into the subject. Two Calla Lilies Together is a strikingly beautiful study of line, color and the relation of forms in space that manifests O’Keeffe’s utterly unique and bold aesthetic.
The second work by O’Keeffe offered is entitled Two Calla Lilies (estimate: $600,000-800,000 Price Realized $1,865,000); the painting is an oil on board and was painted circa 1925-1926. Both Two Calla Lilies Together and Two Calla Lilies have been in their current collections for decades, and have never been sold at auction previously.
Christie’s 23 May 2013  My Backyard by Georgia O’Keeffe (estimate: $1,000,000-1,500,000) is a wonderful example of the New Mexican landscapes with which the artist has become so closely associated and is being sold to benefit the Foundation for Community Empowerment in Dallas Texas. The work, which was painted in 1943 when O’Keeffe was frequently traveling to the Southwest, emphasizes the monumental and spiritual qualities of the region. As with her finest works, the strength of My Backyard lies in its careful balance of realism and abstraction, its intricate layering of objective and subjective meaning, and its wonderful synthesis of form and color. 1,000,000-1,500,000 |
Sotheby's November 2012
Georgia O’Keeffe had the top two lots at Sotheby’s; both plant paintings, Autumn Leaf II (1927) sold for $4,282,500
and A White Camellia (1938) brought $3,218,500.
Christie’s 28 November 2012
O’Keeffe's Sun Water Maine (1922) was the second highest price at Christie’s at $2,210,500, exceeding the high estimate of $1,500,000.
While many Modernists in the 1920s turned to the industrial sector for inspiration, Georgia O’Keeffe embraced the spiritual power of nature. Executed in 1922, Sun Water Maine is a fantastic and rare example of O’Keeffe’s early work that reinterprets the tradition of the American landscape. She returned to the sun motif throughout her career, having first been employed in her 1917 Evening Star series. In Sun Water Maine, O’Keeffe displays her mastery of the pastel medium, creating a complex and visually striking surface as she varies the application and saturation of the pigments and juxtaposes rich surface with bare paper, heightening the effect of each.
In addition to Sun Water Maine, Georgia O’Keeffe’s The Black Place III was offered from the Slick Family Collection (estimate: $1,500,000-2,500,000). Executed in 1945, The Black Place III is a rare and impressive large-scale pastel that depicts the hilly terrain of New Mexico in a wonderful synthesis of form and color.
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In addition to Sun Water Maine, Georgia O’Keeffe’s The Black Place III was offered from the Slick Family Collection (estimate: $1,500,000-2,500,000). Executed in 1945, The Black Place III is a rare and impressive large-scale pastel that depicts the hilly terrain of New Mexico in a wonderful synthesis of form and color.
- Christie’s 16 May 2012
GEORGIA O'KEEFFE (1887-1986)
LAKE GEORGE IN WOODS
Estimate $300,000 - $500,000 Price Realized $902,500
Christie’s NOVEMBER 30, 2011
Christie’s sale of American Paintingsin New York NOVEMBER 30, 2011 boasted two tour-de-force paintings from the Collection by Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986). Painted seven years apart, My Autumn, 1929(;estimate: $2,000,000-3,000,000)
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and Black Iris,1936 (estimate: $1,200,000-1,800,000) are exemplary of O’Keeffe’s highly personal and thoroughly modern aesthetic and of her sensual and evocative depictions of nature. My Autumn captures the intensity of Adirondack fall colors and was painted in the pivotal year between a decade of summers and falls spent at the Stieglitz family compound in Lake George, N.Y., before the artist’s move to New Mexico. The painting was displayed in her husband Alfred Stieglitz’s highly influential New York gallery, An American Place. Though both paintings are meditations on nature and color, Black Irisis from a later series O’Keeffe worked on during a period of intense focus on a type of heightened realism that approaches abstraction. Most of the other paintings from this series are hanging in museum collections.
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GEORGIA O'KEEFFE (1887-1986)
MY AUTUMN
Estimate $2,000,000 - $3,000,000 Price Realized $2,770,500
SOTHEBY’S DEC 4 2013
Estimate 500,000 — 700,000
Lot Sold 965,000
Estimate 450,000 — 650,000
Lot Sold 605,000
Christie’s December 1, 2010
Georgia O'Keeffe, Canna Red and Orange, oil on canvas, Painted in 1926 Estimate $1,200,000 - $1,800,000 Price Realized $1,426,500 S |
Sotheby's May 19, 2010
GEORGIA O'KEEFFE
1887 - 1986
1887 - 1986
INSIDE CLAM SHELL
Estimate
3,000,000 — 5,000,000
LOT SOLD. 3,442,500
- Christie's 23 May 2001
