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.
Date
Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.
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–June 22, 1993; Mexico City, Palacio de Bellas Artes, July 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, Sept. 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, June 23–Sept. 11, 2005.
Whitney Museum of American Art, Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction, Sept. 17, 2009–Jan. 17, 2010; Washington DC, Phillips Collection, Feb. 6–May 9, 2012; Santa Fe, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, May 28–Sept. 12, 2010 (New York only).
London, Tate Modern, Georgia O’Keeffe, July 6–Oct. 30, 2016; Vienna, Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien, Dec. 7, 2016–Mar. 26, 2017; Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, Apr. 22–July 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.
Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.
