Claire's Art Blog: Georgia O'Keeffe and Kathe Kollwitz

Georgia O’Keeffe and Kathe Kollwitz are two influential women artist who grew up in very different worlds and have their own personal artistic style. O’Keeffe grew up on a farm in Wisconsin and her work focused on nature of the Southwest. Kollwitz grew up in a town called Konigsberg in Russia. Her work places an emphasis on self-portraits, mother-daughter relationships, hardships of the working class, war and death. Although they are very different artists, they have both become influential women in the art world.

Georgia O’Keeffe studied at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago and the Art Students League in New York. In these years, she supported herself by teaching art and by 1912 she was teaching art in Amarillo, Texas. This is how her love for the Southwest began. O’Keeffe got her start by a friend going back on a promise she had made to O’Keeffe. The friend promised to keep the drawings that O'Keeffe showed her private, but she showed the drawings to artist and photographer, Alfred Stieglitz. By 1917 O’Keeffe had her very own solo show.

O’Keeffe moved to New York and married Stieglitz in 1924. They had a very unconventional marriage because O’Keeffe spent most her time in the Southwest and Stieglitz spent his time in New York. O’Keeffe marched to the beat of her own drum. She only dressed in black and she only associated herself with people that she thought were stimulating and interesting. O’Keeffe shows a lot of balance and symmetry in nature with her paintings. O’Keeffe also uses a lot of color in painting: they are bright, vibrant, and strong.

Georgia O’Keeffe. Bella Donna. 1939.

Georgia O’Keeffe. Cow’s Skull with Calico Roses. 1931.

Georgia O’Keeffe. Deer’s Skull with Pedernal. 1936. Oil on Canvas.

Georgia O’Keeffe. Summer Days. 1936.

Kollwitz was trained in Berlin and Munich where she received the best art training for women at that time. She trained as a painter but soon realized that her passion wasn’t in painting, it was in drawings and etchings. Kollwitz identified herself as a socialist and felt the struggles of the working people and the struggles of women to keep their children safe in a war torn Europe. You can see these themes in her art work. Kollwitz herself lost her son during WWI and her grandson in WWII. Kollwitz felt that she needed to be an advocate for the women and children who were affected by the war and she did that by using her gift as an artist.

Kollwitz’s drawings and etchings are very eerie. You can feel the struggle and pain that the piece emits. O’Keeffe’s messages are not as direct, but they are beautiful and she conveys a strong message with her symmetry and balance. We haven’t learned a lot about women artists until now. I wish that they were more prevalent in art history, but I did enjoy learning more about Georgia O’Keeffe and Kathe Kollwitz.