“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.
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.
“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.
Mich.ke 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 Calif.ws 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/Yale University Press, 2009), cat. 67.
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).
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, Jun 10–16, 1957, cat. 21.
Fort Worth, Texas, 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. by Mitchell A. Wilder, p. 29; Houston Museum of Fine Arts, May 17–Jul 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, Sep 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–Jun 19, 1988; Dallas Museum of Art, Jul 13–Oct 16, 1988; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nov 19, 1988–Feb 5, 1989, cat. 73.
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.
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