Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O'Keeffe was an American painter often called the mother of American modernism. Born in Wisconsin in 1887, she spent decades finding beauty in things other artists overlooked, from the folds of a single flower blown up to fill a whole canvas to the bleached bones she found in the desert. Her flowers are so large and close that they feel like landscapes in themselves, though she brushed off the sexual readings critics kept attaching to them.

Much of her mature work grew out of New Mexico, where she eventually settled at a remote spot called Ghost Ranch. The bare hills, adobe walls, and animal skulls of that country became her lifelong subject, painted in clean shapes and warm, dry color. She kept working into old age even as her sight failed, and she remains one of the most recognizable American artists of the twentieth century.