wonder | wander | world pick of the week for Women's History Month is this sibling rivalry between the O'Keeffe sisters. Yes, the Georgia O'Keeffe, had not just one, but two sisters [Ida and Anita] who were also talented artists, whom she competed with.
A recent exhibition Ida O’Keeffe: Escaping Georgia’s Shadow offered a revelatory look at artist Ida O’Keeffe (1889–1961).
Organized by Sue Canterbury at the Dallas Museum of Art, the exhibition grapples head-on with the challenge of elevating the lesser-known sister of one of America’s most celebrated painters.
Alfred Stieglitz gel silver print of Ida O’Keeffe, 1924
With a small but carefully researched selection of paintings and works on paper, the exhibition and accompanying catalogue do an outstanding job of establishing the integrity of Ida O’Keeffe’s artistic career.
In their forthright confrontation of Georgia’s celebrity, they lay essential groundwork for future, more nuanced approaches to investigating Ida’s role in American modernism.
Ida Ten Eyck O’Keeffe, Variation on a Lighthouse Theme V
c. 1931-32, oil on canvas, Jeri L. Wolfson Collection
Sadly, the sisters get tangled in a fragile power dynamic even Georgia struggled to navigate. Ida never gave up painting and exhibiting her art, but personal conflicts and practical obligations forced her to abandon the supportive network of the Stieglitz Circle and its potentially transformative role in her career.
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| Ida Ten Eyck O’Keeffe, Creation, 1936, oil on canvas, Gerald Peters Gallery |
It really is too bad that the sisters became rivals instead - they did not bond more closely together and take their challenges on side by side.
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