theWRIGHTartblog

Maddison Wright
Intro to Art History
11/4/2013

Georgia O’Keefe & Kathe Kollwitz

When reading about specific artists who came before us most autobiographies of those famous artists consist of men, not women. Though two women artists stand out between the 1800’s and 1900’s, their names are Georgia O’Keefe and Kathe Kollwitz. Both took some type of formal art education before contributing to the imagination and creativity of the art world; both embody strong individualistic women.

Georgia O’Keefe was born in Wisconsin but spent most her time perfecting her art in New Mexico (where she worked best). This place became one of the reasons O’Keefe and her husband Alfred Stieglitz could not be together most of their lives, they both had busy schedules. Stieglitz would continually exhibit O’Keefe’s paintings while he photographed for his fulfillment of his own passion. When Stieglitz first saw O’Keefe’s art work he said the collection was the “purest, finest, sincerest things that had entered 291 in a long time” (Stieglitz). This is relating to the 291 exhibit O’Keefe entered; O’Keefe was not a part of any art movement. Although most of her work seems abstract and colorful; for instance her oil painting titled Black Iris III is said to depict female genitalia while representing an iris flower. Her famous painting, The Lawrence Tree, at first could look like nothing but randomly placed shapes and lines, but when looked at with a different view in mind, it becomes a tree when laying on the ground and looking upward at the stars around you. Most of her works as well seem to take a magnifying-glass view. Her paintings remind me of a scientist looking under a microscope and viewing the tiny particles that make up a bigger substance. During O’Keefe’s early life she had started painting flowers as if they were viewed up close. She had also stated in her early thirties that painting, “seemed to be the only thing I could do that didn’t concern anybody but myself--that was nobody’s business but my own.” I feel Georgia O’Keefe, like many artists, considered art as her only outlet to truly illustrate how she goes about thinking up ideas.

Another well accredited female artist is Kathe Kollwitz, who when found that painting was not her calling focused on her prints and drawings (with a few sculptures). Her art work was primarily black and white and I think this worked for her because her art works were already strong images alone, they did not need the added color to make them any stronger. Kollwitz was born in what is now Russia, to a radical social democrat as a father. Her father took notice to her talent and enrolled her in one of the best art schools that aloud women at the time. Kollwitz art works demonstrated her passion for certain issues including herself as an artist, the relationship between a mother and her child, hardships of the working classes, cruelties of war, and her obsession with death. During World War I and II Kollwitz lost a son and grandson. She understood the themes she drew about because she had lived through them; Kollwitz became a part of the Expressionism movement.

Georgia O’Keefe and Kathe Kollwitz are some of the greatest female artists known today. Their work will continue to be appreciated with O’Keefe’s abstract paintings and Kollwitz’s gut-wrenching sketches of the hardships of life.