Issue Date: May 23, 1996
City: Santa Fe, NM
Quantity: 156,300,000
Printed By: Stamp Venturers
Printing Method: Photogravure
Perforations: 11.6 x 11.4
Color: Multicolored

 

One of America’s leading artists, Georgia O’Keeffe is known for her sensitive, semi-abstract paintings derived from nature. Linked with the first generation of American modernists, her impressive career spanned the entire history of modern art. While much of the modernist work showed a strong European influence, O’Keeffe developed her own unique style, reducing and simplifying forms to an abstract study of color and light. Her best-known subjects included flowers, animal bones, and rocks.

 

Born and raised near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, she went on to study at several schools, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Virginia University, Columbia University, and the Students League of New York. In 1924 she married American photographer Alfred Stieglitz, who had been exhibiting her works in his avant-garde gallery since 1916. Much of her work was influenced by Stieglitz, whose works included closely cropped images.

 

O’Keeffe was strongly impressed by the beauty of the desert during a visit to New Mexico in 1929. Greatly influencing her work, the Southwest landscape became one of her favorite subjects. During the 1950s she began to travel extensively, and in 1959 even made a trip around the world. From that journey and subsequent airplane flights came her series on the sky and clouds.