During the unit introduction we were given an important, interesting, influential person in which we have to use a range of resources to gain a thorough research into out individual and identify key facts about their life, works, influences, background etc. My aim is to create a factual animation that will best inform everyone of my chosen individual. I want it to be exciting and eye catching to encourage my other colleagues to do their own research into my chosen individual.
The important, interesting influential person that i picked out is Georgia O'Keeffe; a compelling American artist from the twentieth century. O'Keeffe was born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin in 1887 and longed to be an artist from an early age. O'Keeffe studied at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1905 and a year later went on to study at the Art Students League of New York, where her work was well received. O'Keeffe for a short time abandoned the art world to pursue other careers and briefly worked as a commercial artist in Chicago and soon after moved to Texas to teach. O'Keeffe began to re-enter into the world of painting in 1915 after taking classes at the Teachers College of Columbia University in South Carolina.
Two years on she met Alfred Stieglitz a photographer and gallery owner who later became O'Keeffe's husband. For twenty years the couple worked together and in this time O'Keeffe created her most famous pieces, the rich overpowering flowers on large canvasses and the understated beauty of her cityscape's.A trip to Toas, New Mexico in 1929 altered the course of O'Keeffe's life. Each summer O'Keeffe returned to Toas to paint the open skies and gorgeous landscapes and in 1946 when Stieglitz tragically passed away O'Keeffe took up permanent residence there.
Between the 1950's and 1960's O'Keeffe traveled around the world where news of her work spread and her fame grew rapidly; O'Keeffe was later labelled as one of the most important and influential American Painters. Unfortunately in 1971 O'Keeffe's vision deteriated and she withdrew herself once again from the art world. Two years on when she returned to work she was encouraged by a man called Juan Hamilton, a young ceramic artist to take up her paint brush and restart her sculptures. O'Keeffe wrote her autobiography, 'GEORGIA O'KEEFFE' which became a best seller and O'Keeffe actually illustrated the while book.
In March 1985 O'Keeffe passed away at St Vincent's Hospital in Santa Fe, New Mexico at the age of 98. Georgia O'Keeffe's work represents the new beginning for American art, and her work remains and will still remain prominent part of the international art world.
