Oftentimes when we talk about influential women, they have one defining moment, whether that be a speech, an act, or a work of art. These women are known for one moment in their history, which, while still incredible, often puts them above women who didn’t have one large impact point, but rather a constant stream of small influences. This is the case with Georgia O’Keeffe. 

Georgia O’Keeffe was one of the most influential artists in the United States to ever live. Her work not only inspired women, but also artists who felt stuck in the formalities of art at the time. O’Keeffe was educated as an artist with very strict rules and ideas, she had learned that “art” was just painting what you saw, making copies of the real world on a canvas. Needless to say, this did not sit well with O’Keeffe. She decided to take a break from art after graduating from the Art Students League in 1908.

Five years later, O’Keeffe began lessons with well-renowned expressionist painter Arthur Wesley Dow, who showed her that she could, in fact, paint what she was feeling and not just what she saw. With this new outlook on art, O’Keeffe began working with charcoal abstract, eventually moving to whimsical abstract paintings. She decided to send these works of art to a friend in New York (O’Keeffe was living in Texas), who ended up giving them to a famous photographer and art gallery owner, Alfred Stieglitz. O’Keeffe’s was officially premiered in 1916 in one of Stieglitz’s galleries in New York. She worked closely with him for the next few years, and they eventually became lovers, marrying when his divorce was finalized from his first wife in 1924.

Georgia O’Keeffe is most famously known for her close-up abstract work with nature, which is more famously interpreted as her paintings of female genitalia. Not only was this revolutionary for reasons that do not need to be said, but also because it was the first art series that could be open to interpretation. Most abstract work up until that point had been so abstract that there was no room for interpretation, where O’Keeffe’s work was an abstract interpretation on something real, that could then be seen as something else. She never confirmed or denied if her works were paintings of flowers or females.

In the 1930s, O’Keefe had a breakdown and moved to New Mexico to focus more on desert landscape work rather than close-ups. A few years later, she had 2 retrospectives premiered in New York, One focusing on her flower paintings, another on her desert landscape pieces. Georgia O’Keeffe was the first woman to have a retrospective done for her in the Whitney Museum of American Art.

In 1977, she was awarded the highest honor of any American Civilian, the Presidential medal of Freedom, which was presented to her by President Ford. She changed the game in interpretive abstract art.  Georgia O’Keeffe was a leader and a revolutionist in the world of art, particularly in the world of feminist art.