With the help of her husband, an influential gallery owner, Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia went on to become one of the most renown artists of her time. In the mid-1920s, O’Keeffe was significantly influenced by the precisionists. During this stage in her life, she produced a series of hard-edged works showcasing skyscrapers in New York like the New York Street with Moon. It was also around this period when she gained interest in near-abstract paintings. She started producing near-abstract paintings based on natural forms. She made paintings of flowers, shells and plants. This is the time when she produced the Red Poppy.
Description of Red Poppy
Red Poppy is one of the key productions by Georgia O'Keeffe. The piece contains an entire canvas filled with soft, undulating forms. They are executed in luminous reds and blacks. The painting depicts an enlarged Red Poppy painted against a pale blue and pink background. The center of the flower is painted in dark purple which sharply contracts with the bright vermillion used on its petals.
She used carefully modulated tonalities. This is reminiscent of conventional watercolor paintings. This approach helps give impressions of light. It also gives impressions of ephemeral forms flowing in an undefined space. It is also not far-fetched to suggest that the shapes used in the painting evoke natural forms. They also suggest that the leaves are seen from an extremely close-up position. She also uses tints of red, orange, white, and pink to make the flower appear three dimensional and seem closer to the viewer.
The smooth colour gradations and attention to detail seen in this painting are proof that O'Keeffe was intensely emotional to nature. She shared her intense emotional response to nature through her great artwork like this piece. She was often frustrated by the fast pace of the world and wanted to use her enlarged flower paintings to show people the wonder of small flowers up close. Art critics also suggest that she saw flowers as a form of female sexuality. The Red Poppy was created in 1928 through oil on canvas medium using precisionism style. It features an original size of 30 by 36 inches. The painting is currently located at the Museum of fine arts in St. Petersburg.
Other similar paintings
As mentione earlier, Georgia has an intensely emotional response to nature. For this reason, she made masterpieces featuring flowers, vegetable and plants. Other than the Red Poppy, Georgia O'Keeffe is also the mastermind behind Black Iris, Cows Skull with Calico Roses and the Jimson Weed.
