“For me, painting the crosses was a way of painting the country,” recalled Georgia O’Keeffe about the series of compositions featuring Catholic crosses that she created upon visiting the Southwest in 1929. In Black Cross, New Mexico, she contrasted the handmade cross, magnified in scale and isolated flat against the picture plane, with the distant brilliance of the sunset behind the rolling hills. O’Keeffe’s cross paintings helped cement her association with New Mexico, to which she would return every summer until she moved there permanently in 1949. The Art Institute organized her first major museum retrospective in 1943, and purchased this painting at the time.
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.
Mable Dodge Luhan, “Georgia O’Keeffe in Taos,” Creative Art, 8, 6 (June 6, 1931) p. 406 ill.
“The Paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe in Taos,” Atelier, 101, (June 1931), 440 ill.
Waldo Frank, Lewis Mumford, Dorothy Norman, et al. eds., America and Alfred Stieglitz, (New York: The Literary Guild, 1934), pl. XXB.
Daniel Catton Rich, “Exhibition of Paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe,” Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago, 37, 2 (1943), 17–20.
Time, vol. Xlvii, 21 (May 1946), 75.
Mabel Dodge Luhan, Taos and Its Artists (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1947).
Denys Sutton, American Painting (London: Avalon Press, 1948), 27, pl. 46.
Journal of the American Association of University Women, 45, 2 (1952). Inside front cover.
Mitchell A. Wilder, ed., Georgia O’Keeffe: An Exhibition of the Work of the Artist from 1915 to 1966, exh. cat. (Fort Worth, TX: Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, 1966), 29.
“Georgia O’Keeffe: Landscape of the Mind,” Bulletin of The Art Institute of Chicago Bulletin, 64, 5 (November 1970).
John Russell, “Roots of U.S. Abstract Painting,” New York Times, September 30, 1975, 34.
Ron White, “Georgia O’Keeffe: Landscape of the Mind,” San Antonio Express–News, November 9, 1975, 7H ill.
Georgia O’Keeffe, Georgia O’Keeffe, New York: A Studio Book, Viking Press, 1976, pl. 64.
Robert Hughes, “Eyeball and Earthly Paradise,” Time (October 1976).
Frederick A. Horowitz, More Than You See: A Guide to Art (Fort Worth, London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992).
Elizabeth Montgomery, Georgia O’Keeffe, (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1993), 118 ill.
Michke Venezia, Getting to Know the World’s Greatest Artists: Georgia O’Keeffe (Chicago: Children’s Press, 1993).
Charles C. Eldridge, Georgia O’Keeffe: American and Modern (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993, 199, fig. 20.
Arnold Skolnick, ed., Paintings of the Southwest (New York: Clarkson, Potter Publishers, 1994, 13 ill.
Mary Ann CAws and Christopher Prendergast, The HarperCollins World Reader (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994.
Patricia Trenton, Sandra D’Emilio, Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890–1945 (Autry Museum of Western Heritage/University of California Press, 1995).
Henry W. Peacock, Art as Expression (Washington, DC: Whalesback Books, 1995).
David Frankel, Masterpieces: The Best–Loved Paintings from America’s Museums (New York: Simon & Schuster).
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), 64, ill.
Susan Wright, Georgia O’Keeffe: An Eternal Spirit (New York: Todtri, 1996).
Robert Hughes, American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997).
Richard H. Robbins, Cultural Anthropology: A Problem–Based Approach (Itasca, Illinois: F.E. Peacock Publishers, 1997).
Delia Gaze, Dictionary of Women Artists (London, Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publisher, 1997).
Bram Dijkstra, Georgia O’Keeffe and the Eros of Place, (Princeton University Press, 1998).
Karen Stone, The Visual World: Finding Spiritual Meaning in Art (Cleveland, Ohio: Pilgrim Press, 1999).
Barbara Buhler Lynes, “Georgia O’Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné,” (National Gallery of Art/Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation/Yale University Press, 1999) no. 667 (vol. 1).
Judith A. Barter, et al., American Modernism at the Art Institute of Chicago, From World War I to 1955 (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2009), 22, 155–60, cat. 67 (ill.).
Paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago: Highlights of the Collection, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2017), 116.
Marta Ruiz del Arbol, ed., Georgia O’Keeffe, exh. cat. (Madrid: Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, 2021), 23, fig. 2 (ill).
Sarah Kelly Oehler and Annelise K. Madsen, eds., Georgia O’Keeffe: “My New Yorks”, exh. cat. (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2024), pl. 61 (ill.).
New York, An American Place, New Paintings: New Mexico, New York, Lake George, 1930, no. 14.
Art Institute of Chicago, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jan. 21–Feb. 22, 1943, cat. 28 (ill. p. 28).
New York, Museum of Modern Art, Romantic Painting in America, 1943, cat. by James Thrall Soby and Dorothy C. Miller, no. 157.
New York, Museum of Modern Art, Georgia O’Keeffe, May 14–Aug. 25, 1946, no cat.
New York, Wildenstein Gallery, Landmarks in American Art, 1670–1950, Feb. 26–Mar. 28, 1953, no. 48 ill.
Lake Forest, Ill., Durand Art Institute, Lake Forest College, A Century of American Painting: Masterpieces Loaned by the Art Institute of Chicago, June 10–16, 1957, cat. 21.
Fort Worth, TX, Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Georgia O’Keeffe: An Exhibition of the Work of the Artist from 1915 to 1966, Mar. 17–May 8, 1966, cat.; Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, May 26–July 3, 1966.
New York, Whitney Museum, Georgia O’Keeffe, Oct. 8–Nov. 29, 1970; cat. by Lloyd Goodrich and Doris Bry, p. 18, no. 63; the Art Institute of Chicago, Jan. 1–Feb. 7, 1971; San Francisco Museum of Art, Mar. 15–Apr. 30, 1971.
Denver Art Museum, Picturesque Images from Taos and Santa Fe, Jan. 12–Mar. 17, 1974, cat. by Pat Trenton, p. 161, no. 15.
Santa Fe, New Mexico, Governor’s Gallery, State Capitol Building, Georgia O’Keeffe, Apr. 27–May 25, 1975, no. cat.
San Antonio, Texas, Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute, Georgia O’Keeffe, Oct. 24–Nov. 30, 1975, no cat.
New York, Museum of Modern Art, The Natural Paradise: Painting in America 1800–1950, Sept. 29–Nov. 30, 1976, no. 119 ill.
Chicago, School of the Art Institute, 100 Artists–100 Years, Nov. 23, 1979–Jan. 20, 1980, no. 75, ill. p. 45.
Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art, Georgia O’Keeffe: Arts and Letters, Nov. 1, 1987–Feb. 21, 1988; the Art Institute of Chicago, Mar. 5–June 19, 1988; Dallas Museum of Art, July 13–Oct. 16, 1988; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nov. 19, 1988–Feb. 5, 1989, cat. 73.
Art Institute of Chicago, Georgia O’Keeffe: “My New Yorks”, June 2–Sept. 22, 2024, cat. 61; Atlanta, High Museum of Art, Oct. 25, 2024–Feb. 16, 2025.
Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986), New York, 1929; consigned to An American Place, New York, by 1943; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1943.
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.
