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Lost O'keeffe Painting Surfaces

Updated: Jun 7, 2018

A friend sent me an article this week about a recent exhibition of Georgia

O'keeffe’s work being held at the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG). This

exhibition which opened on May 19th, is a collection of works relating to the

period of time O'keeffe spent in Hawaii.

Many of these works I had not seen before, even though I own several books

documenting her work. Have you seen the ones below?


Georgia Okeffe, Waterfall No 1
Waterfall No. 1, Īao Valley, Maui, 1939. © 2018 Georgia OʼKeeffe Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of the New York Botanical Garden.

She paints in greens as beautifully as her red desert mountains.


Georgia Okeeffe, Crabs Claw Ginger
Georgia OʼKeeffe, Heliconia, Crabʼs Claw Ginger, 1939. © 2018 Georgia OʼKeeffe Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of the New York Botanical Garden.

There was an important painting missing from this collection however, Hibiscus,

which has been out of the spot light since 1998 when it was exhibited in a

Memphis gallery. Other than that, it has remained in private collections and the

New York gallery had a great deal of difficulty tracking it down. In fact the

exhibition opened without it.


Georgia  OʼKeeffe,  Hibiscus,
Georgia OʼKeeffe, Hibiscus, 1939. Courtesy of Christieʼs.

Georgia OʼKeeffe, Hibiscus, 1939. Courtesy of Christieʼs.

The intriguing thing is that on May 22nd Christies Auction house had located this

very painting and was offering it up for auction. It sold for a cool $4.8 Million. Now

it has come to light again, the next venues for the Okeeffe exhibition are keen to

try and secure the painting as the finishing piece for this important body of work.

So if you are in New York the exhibition runs from

Saturday, May 19, 2018 –

Sunday, October 28, 2018 at the

New York Botanical Garden (NYBG).

The Garden is located at Bronx River Parkway and Fordham Road in the Bronx, and

is easy to reach by car, subway, bus, and Metro-North.

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