Banana Flower No.1, 1933 charcoal on paper Arkansas Arts Center Foundation Purchase: Museum Purchase Plan of the NEA and the Tabriz Fund, 1974. 74.011.00h
Georgia O'Keeffe
American, 1887 - 1986
O'Keeffe began her studies at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1905-06. This was followed by two years of instruction at the Arts Students League in New York City. Later she studied at the University of Virginia and Columbia University. In 1916, her drawings and watercolors where shown to the New York dealer, Alfred Stieglitz who displayed them in his 291 Gallery. O'Keeffe married the dealer in 1924 and he continued to mount exhibitions of her work every year until he died in 1946. By 1930, O'Keeffe had a strong reputation and merited an entire gallery at the Brooklyn Museum.
In 1935 Banana Flower No. 1 was selected for an exhibition in Stieglitz's new Intimate Gallery. Because of O'Keeffe's attention to flowers, including such rich portrayals, many critics and art historians have added layers of meaning or inference to these paintings and drawings. Even in the face of their reactions the artist maintained that the flowers are iconographically simple. She once stated, "I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers."
  
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