stories

Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) discovered New Mexico during the summer of 1929, in Taos. The American artist was then known for her paintings of flowers, in planes so tight that they seemed abstract, and her urban landscapes, in particular her unique representations of New York, where she had lived since 1918. Married for five years to the famous photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz, who left his wife for her, O’Keeffe is tired of their annual vacation in Lake George, in the latter’s family property, in northern New York. She returned the previous year to the lands of her native Wisconsin, and wishes to return to the American West.

She also knows that Stieglitz, who is 23 years older than her, cheats on her with an assistant 41 years her junior, and distances herself from this fickle spouse. What was supposed to be just a summer getaway turns out to be a founding experience that unleashes her creativity and changes the course of her art – and her existence. As she later explained: “As soon as I saw [le Nouveau-Mexique], it was my country. I had never seen anything like it before, but it suited me perfectly. The artist continued to come every year before settling there permanently for the last four decades of his life.

O’Keeffe spends his summers exploring the arid lands of northern Santa Fe, until her discovery of the Ghost Ranch in 1934. She first rented a cabin on this tourist-oriented ranch, 8,500 hectares of desert expanses owned by a wealthy nature-loving couple, Arthur and Phoebe Pack. She will buy them a piece of land and a house six years later!

“It’s my private mountain”

O’Keeffe found the views of the landscapes around him irresistible, and confided to his friend, the art critic Henry McBride in 1939: “All the earth colors of the painter’s palette are there”. She will represent the Cerro Pedernal, visible from the patio of her house, twenty-four times. The artist has the same passion for this ancient volcano as Cézanne did for Mont Sainte-Victoire – his ashes will be scattered there following his death. “It’s my private mountain,” she jokes, “God told me that if I painted it enough, it would be mine. O’Keeffe is also fascinated by the orange and yellow cliffs of the hills that rise behind her property, and they too will inspire many of her works.

After Ghos Ranch, Georgia O’Keeffe sets her sights on an 18th century ruin^e century turned towards nature.

© Aude Adrien for BeauxArts.com

Unfortunately, this residence in the heart of the desert is not habitable all year round : water is lacking and it is impossible to grow anything there. O’Keeffe actively seeks another plot of land in Abiquiú, a few miles away, and falls in love with an 18th century ruin.^e century. Sitting on top of a mesa (or plateau), the nearly two-hectare lot offers a bird’s eye view of the Rio Chama valley, while providing the artist with the comfortable proximity of a village. O’Keeffe is seduced by the adobe house when she discovers its patio among the ruins. The inner courtyard houses a well giving him access to water, a precious and rare resource that will allow him to create a vegetable garden, large enough to ensure his subsistence and that of his visitors.

The patio wall and its door, painted black, will be the subject of 18 paintings.

But it’s the long wall of the patio, pierced by a door opening onto a word (small secret room), which decided her absolutely to acquire the site: “This door was something that I had to own”, she would say later. She will fight for ten years to buy the adobe house – at least what remains of it – then owned by the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. In 1945, she becomes the owner and begins its renovation with the help of a young writer met a few years earlier, Maria Chabot.

For four years, the two women will correspond almost daily: Chabot supervises the work on site while O’Keeffe manages the estate of Stieglitz, who died in 1946. She settled permanently in her new home in 1949. The patio wall and its door, painted black , will be the subject of 18 paintings in the decade that follows, including four in the very year of his move!

The decoration is deeply influenced by Japanese aesthetics.

Abiquiú’s house is an ode to the nature that surrounds it : the artist endows her studio with a huge window almost five meters long, and her adjoining bedroom also benefits from this breathtaking view of the valley she loves so much and the mountains that border it. The wood used to restore the house is locally salvaged, O’Keeffe even manages to keep the original ceiling, dating from 1744, in the scullery.

An original suspension offered by Isamu Noguchi

The decoration is, for its part, deeply marked by Japanese aesthetics, which had a fundamental impact on the artist at the end of his life: witness the sage tree carved in the manner of a – large – bonsai in the patio, the palette of earth, dark green and beige colors of its interior, the intrusion of stones and trunks into the house, or even the original suspension offered by Isamu Noguchi above the table (which she has drawn herself) in the dining room.

O’Keeffe, who divides his time between this house and that of Ghost Ranch, will never stop creating – despite his handicap.

Today everything is exactly as O’Keeffe left it. when she left for Santa Fe for good in 1984, two years before her death. There are many bones and stones from his collection, as well as some of his rare sculptures – one spiral, in the studio, imitating the helicoidal movement of the ram’s horns, two others, conical in shape and belonging to a series (unfinished) of three, stand in the patio.

We also discover some of his ceramics, shaped with the help of his young protege Juan Hamilton from 1974; the artist, suffering from macular degeneration, can no longer paint without assistance and decides to tackle this new medium… at the age of 87! Because O’Keeffe, who divides his time between this house and that of Ghost Ranch, will never stop creating – despite his handicap.

Strolling through the rooms, every centimeter of which has been carefully thought out, the words of Carolyn Kastner, curator of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, take on their full meaning: “Her houses are among the most characteristic works of Georgia O’Keeffe’s creativity. They are an expression of his connection to New Mexico. » Connection so strong that it colors the whole space, confusing the walls with the desert, the artist with his work, and giving the visitor the desire to get lost in his paintings as much as in the arid lands that inspired them .