Georgia O’Keeffe, the most famous woman artist of American modernism and a pioneer in shaping abstract art, had a fiercely independent vision. In her work she created a discrete and intense world, blending the abstract with the real in interpretations of the grandeur of the high desert and of flowers, bones, shells, rocks and landscapes – her hallmark subjects. A world also formed around O’Keeffe herself, from the iconic photographic nude studies of her by Alfred Stieglitz to the images of her in her later years, taken in the magnificent landscapes of New Mexico.

This book is a sensitive and incisive examination of O’Keeffe’s groundbreaking works, their evolution, and how their reception has been caught in conflicts between O’Keeffe’s inner self and her public persona. It follows the young artist as her early abstract charcoal landscapes caught the attention of gallery impresario Stieglitz, and tells the story of their partnership, of Stieglitz’s nudes and the development of O’Keeffe’s reputation as a sexually inspired, Freudian-minded artist.

Unique to this biography is the use of O’Keeffe’s letters – which have only recently been made available – as source material. The artist’s words are shown to be just as revelatory as her paintings. The result is a succinct yet comprehensive account of the long life and fertile body of work of one of the most important artists of the twentieth century.