Georgia O'Keeffe
dal 23/10/2003 al 1/2/2004
Segnalato da
23/10/2003
Georgia O'Keeffe
Kunsthaus Zurich, Zurich
This exhibition in the newly refurbished Buhrlesaal will allow visitors to engage on a deeper level with original works by Georgia O'Keeffe, and to experience firsthand the uniquely 'floating' quality of her paintings. Balanced between picture and abstraction, close-up and monumentality, naturalism and artificiality - bold compositions emerge with spaces and distances that are nevertheless always 'within reach'.
Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) is without doubt one of the great figures in the 20th-century art. Yet the European public has only a limited acquaintanceship with her work, and predominantly associates her with the large-format flower images familiar from reproductions, posters, postcards and calendars, with totemic images of animal skulls, or with the mythical figure of the artist herself, as she is seen in the photographs of Alfred Stieglitz.
There have scarcely been any large-scale exhibitions of her work on this continent, and no European museums have bought her paintings. This exhibition in the newly refurbished Bührlesaal will allow visitors to engage on a deeper level with original works by Georgia O'Keeffe, and to experience firsthand the uniquely 'floating' quality of her paintings. Balanced between picture and abstraction, close-up and monumentality, naturalism and artificiality - bold compositions emerge with spaces and distances that are nevertheless always 'within reach'.
As a young artist Georgia O'Keeffe absorbed various influences, including European and American modernism; later on she became interested in the culture of native Americans. Nevertheless, right from the outset she set her paintings apart from European traditions by her use of carefully toned colours and compositional methods oriented towards photographic optics, favouring styles that could even be described as 'pre pop'.
In her day Georgia O'Keeffe was a celebrated artist, yet her art never pursued the 'pure doctrine' of modern art, which saw abstraction as an immutable absolute. She always held herself just slightly aloof. But now it seems that the conditions are right for us to discover just how relevant her approach still is today, and to properly appreciate her achievements and the great coherence of her work.
This exhibition is supported by Credit Suisse Private Banking.
Image: Georgia O'Keeffe
Abstraction Blue, 1927
Collection The Museum of
Modern Art, New York
© 2003 ProLitteris, Zürich
Kunsthaus Zürich/Zurcher Kunstgesellschaft
Winkelwiese 4, CH-8001 Zurich
phone: +41 1 253 84 84
fax +41 1 253 84 33