Ida O’Keeffe: Escaping Georgia’s Shadow

Ida TenEyck O’Keeffe was recognized as a gifted artist during her life, but her efforts were overshadowed by those of her famous older sister, Georgia. 

Ida O’Keeffe: Escaping Georgia’s Shadow brings to light rediscovered works by Ida O’Keeffe that reveal she crafted an artistic identity that was distinct, in style and subject matter, from that of her celebrated sibling. 

This DMA-organized exhibition, the first venue of a national tour, showcases for the first time approximately 50 works including paintings, watercolors, prints, and drawings. Also featured are photographs of the artist taken by Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia’s husband, and an original short film focusing on her life. A highlight of the exhibition is a series of lighthouse paintings Ida O’Keeffe created in the early 1930s -- the DMA bringing together 6 of the 7 works-- which reveal the sophistication of her abstract work.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.        

Image: Ida, O'Keeffe, Spring Lethargy, Texas, 1938, oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, General Acquisitions Fund and Janet Kendall Forsythe Fund in honor of Janet Kendall Forsythe on behalf of the Earl A. Forsythe family, 2017.36

Image: Ida Ten Eyck O’Keeffe, Variation on a Lighthouse Theme II, c. 1932, oil on canvas, private collection, Dallas, Texas

Whether or not you go, the exhibition catalog, Ida O’Keeffe: Escaping Georgia’s Shadow, presents a thoughtful consideration of Ida’s personal history and her creative work. As a professionally trained artist, graduating with an MFA from Columbia in 1932, Ida crafted an artistic identity that was dynamic and distinct in style and subject matter from that of her celebrated sibling. The positive critical attention she received became a source of tension between her and Georgia, who was determined that there would be only one painter in the family. Ida’s complex relationship with Georgia and Alfred Stieglitz, though once loving and close, eventually devolved into estrangement. This volume illustrates works by Ida, including oils, watercolors, and monotypes, and examines their merits as well as their place within the aesthetics of American Modernism during the 1920s and 1930s.

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