Cow's Skull with Calico Roses

Georgia O'KeeffeWW-1931-013521

1931·Oil on canvas·91.4 × 61 cm (36 × 24 in.)

<p>Georgia O’Keeffe collected this cow’s skull in New Mexico during the summer of 1930, when a drought had devastated the Southwest, and many animal skeletons could be found in the desert. She was captivated by the stark elegance of the bones and shipped some back to New York so she could paint them the following year. She noted, “To me they are as beautiful as anything I know. . . . The bones seem to cut sharply to the center of something that is keenly alive on the desert.” O’Keeffe’s inclusion of the calico fabric roses—which were used to decorate graves in New Mexico—further evokes questions of life, death, and mortality.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1931
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 91.4 × 61 cm (36 × 24 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Georgia O'Keeffe

Artist

Georgia O'Keeffe

Painting

One of the most successful artists of the 20th century, Georgia O’Keeffe enjoyed a long and varied artistic career in which she introduced many new aesthetic perspectives and approaches in Modernism. Born in Wisconsin in 1887, she studied at the Art Institute of Chicago beginning in 1905 before taking teaching position in South Carolina, Virginia and Texas. She moved to New York City in 1918 at the age of 31 where she became part of the artistic milieu of her future husband photographer Alfred Stieglitz. In these years, she became fascinated with the fast pace of city life and produced paintings highlighting the city’s soaring skyscrapers as symbols of the modern world.

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