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GEORGIA O'KEEFFE (1887-1986)

$7,950,000

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<div>Georgia O’Keeffe’s <em>Black Place II</em> (1945) belongs to one of the most profound and austere series of her career, inspired by repeated journeys to the Bisti Badlands, a remote, otherworldly area of northwestern New Mexico that she called the Black Place. Deeply compelled by this landscape, O’Keeffe often camped there so she could study its shifting forms and tonal subtleties at different hours of the day. In this work, she reduces the scene to its essentials: two massive hills pressing together, no visible horizon, and a composition defined by gravity, stillness, and quiet monumentality. The sweeping, interlocking forms create a sense of scale that feels both intimate and immense, evoking a landscape experienced as presence rather than panorama. </div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div>Works from the Black Place series are exceptionally rare. Of the fourteen canvases O’Keeffe painted, only four remain in private hands; the remainder are held by major institutions including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, SFMOMA, and the Art Institute of Chicago. As a result, opportunities to encounter a work from this group outside of museum collections are exceedingly uncommon. </div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div><em>Black Place II </em>has an illustrious lineage, from its earliest days in the holdings of Alfred Stieglitz’s famous New York gallery, An American Place, to the noted Philadelphia philanthropist and collector Daniel Dietrich, to the collection of Jan T. and Marica Vilcek. The painting’s legacy is further underscored by its unusually long institutional life. It was shown as early as 1946 at Stieglitz’s An American Place, and has continued to appear in major institutional retrospectives, including exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou and, most recently, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This sustained public and scholarly attention has firmly established the importance of the Black Place paintings within O’Keeffe’s oeuvre. </div> <div>Georgia O’Keeffe’s <em>Black Place II</em> (1945) belongs to one of the most profound and austere series of her career, inspired by repeated journeys to the Bisti Badlands, a remote, otherworldly area of northwestern New Mexico that she called the Black Place. Deeply compelled by this landscape, O’Keeffe often camped there so she could study its shifting forms and tonal subtleties at different hours of the day. In this work, she reduces the scene to its essentials: two massive hills pressing together, no visible horizon, and a composition defined by gravity, stillness, and quiet monumentality. The sweeping, interlocking forms create a sense of scale that feels both intimate and immense, evoking a landscape experienced as presence rather than panorama. </div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div>Works from the Black Place series are exceptionally rare. Of the fourteen canvases O’Keeffe painted, only four remain in private hands; the remainder are held by major institutions including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, SFMOMA, and the Art Institute of Chicago. As a result, opportunities to encounter a work from this group outside of museum collections are exceedingly uncommon. </div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div><em>Black Place II </em>has an illustrious lineage, from its earliest days in the holdings of Alfred Stieglitz’s famous New York gallery, An American Place, to the noted Philadelphia philanthropist and collector Daniel Dietrich, to the collection of Jan T. and Marica Vilcek. The painting’s legacy is further underscored by its unusually long institutional life. It was shown as early as 1946 at Stieglitz’s An American Place, and has continued to appear in major institutional retrospectives, including exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou and, most recently, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This sustained public and scholarly attention has firmly established the importance of the Black Place paintings within O’Keeffe’s oeuvre. </div> <div>Georgia O’Keeffe’s <em>Black Place II</em> (1945) belongs to one of the most profound and austere series of her career, inspired by repeated journeys to the Bisti Badlands, a remote, otherworldly area of northwestern New Mexico that she called the Black Place. Deeply compelled by this landscape, O’Keeffe often camped there so she could study its shifting forms and tonal subtleties at different hours of the day. In this work, she reduces the scene to its essentials: two massive hills pressing together, no visible horizon, and a composition defined by gravity, stillness, and quiet monumentality. The sweeping, interlocking forms create a sense of scale that feels both intimate and immense, evoking a landscape experienced as presence rather than panorama. </div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div>Works from the Black Place series are exceptionally rare. Of the fourteen canvases O’Keeffe painted, only four remain in private hands; the remainder are held by major institutions including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, SFMOMA, and the Art Institute of Chicago. As a result, opportunities to encounter a work from this group outside of museum collections are exceedingly uncommon. </div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div><em>Black Place II </em>has an illustrious lineage, from its earliest days in the holdings of Alfred Stieglitz’s famous New York gallery, An American Place, to the noted Philadelphia philanthropist and collector Daniel Dietrich, to the collection of Jan T. and Marica Vilcek. The painting’s legacy is further underscored by its unusually long institutional life. It was shown as early as 1946 at Stieglitz’s An American Place, and has continued to appear in major institutional retrospectives, including exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou and, most recently, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This sustained public and scholarly attention has firmly established the importance of the Black Place paintings within O’Keeffe’s oeuvre. </div> <div>Georgia O’Keeffe’s <em>Black Place II</em> (1945) belongs to one of the most profound and austere series of her career, inspired by repeated journeys to the Bisti Badlands, a remote, otherworldly area of northwestern New Mexico that she called the Black Place. Deeply compelled by this landscape, O’Keeffe often camped there so she could study its shifting forms and tonal subtleties at different hours of the day. In this work, she reduces the scene to its essentials: two massive hills pressing together, no visible horizon, and a composition defined by gravity, stillness, and quiet monumentality. The sweeping, interlocking forms create a sense of scale that feels both intimate and immense, evoking a landscape experienced as presence rather than panorama. </div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div>Works from the Black Place series are exceptionally rare. Of the fourteen canvases O’Keeffe painted, only four remain in private hands; the remainder are held by major institutions including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, SFMOMA, and the Art Institute of Chicago. As a result, opportunities to encounter a work from this group outside of museum collections are exceedingly uncommon. </div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div><em>Black Place II </em>has an illustrious lineage, from its earliest days in the holdings of Alfred Stieglitz’s famous New York gallery, An American Place, to the noted Philadelphia philanthropist and collector Daniel Dietrich, to the collection of Jan T. and Marica Vilcek. The painting’s legacy is further underscored by its unusually long institutional life. It was shown as early as 1946 at Stieglitz’s An American Place, and has continued to appear in major institutional retrospectives, including exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou and, most recently, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This sustained public and scholarly attention has firmly established the importance of the Black Place paintings within O’Keeffe’s oeuvre. </div> <div>Georgia O’Keeffe’s <em>Black Place II</em> (1945) belongs to one of the most profound and austere series of her career, inspired by repeated journeys to the Bisti Badlands, a remote, otherworldly area of northwestern New Mexico that she called the Black Place. Deeply compelled by this landscape, O’Keeffe often camped there so she could study its shifting forms and tonal subtleties at different hours of the day. In this work, she reduces the scene to its essentials: two massive hills pressing together, no visible horizon, and a composition defined by gravity, stillness, and quiet monumentality. The sweeping, interlocking forms create a sense of scale that feels both intimate and immense, evoking a landscape experienced as presence rather than panorama. </div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div>Works from the Black Place series are exceptionally rare. Of the fourteen canvases O’Keeffe painted, only four remain in private hands; the remainder are held by major institutions including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, SFMOMA, and the Art Institute of Chicago. As a result, opportunities to encounter a work from this group outside of museum collections are exceedingly uncommon. </div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div><em>Black Place II </em>has an illustrious lineage, from its earliest days in the holdings of Alfred Stieglitz’s famous New York gallery, An American Place, to the noted Philadelphia philanthropist and collector Daniel Dietrich, to the collection of Jan T. and Marica Vilcek. The painting’s legacy is further underscored by its unusually long institutional life. It was shown as early as 1946 at Stieglitz’s An American Place, and has continued to appear in major institutional retrospectives, including exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou and, most recently, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This sustained public and scholarly attention has firmly established the importance of the Black Place paintings within O’Keeffe’s oeuvre. </div> <div>Georgia O’Keeffe’s <em>Black Place II</em> (1945) belongs to one of the most profound and austere series of her career, inspired by repeated journeys to the Bisti Badlands, a remote, otherworldly area of northwestern New Mexico that she called the Black Place. Deeply compelled by this landscape, O’Keeffe often camped there so she could study its shifting forms and tonal subtleties at different hours of the day. In this work, she reduces the scene to its essentials: two massive hills pressing together, no visible horizon, and a composition defined by gravity, stillness, and quiet monumentality. The sweeping, interlocking forms create a sense of scale that feels both intimate and immense, evoking a landscape experienced as presence rather than panorama. </div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div>Works from the Black Place series are exceptionally rare. Of the fourteen canvases O’Keeffe painted, only four remain in private hands; the remainder are held by major institutions including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, SFMOMA, and the Art Institute of Chicago. As a result, opportunities to encounter a work from this group outside of museum collections are exceedingly uncommon. </div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div><em>Black Place II </em>has an illustrious lineage, from its earliest days in the holdings of Alfred Stieglitz’s famous New York gallery, An American Place, to the noted Philadelphia philanthropist and collector Daniel Dietrich, to the collection of Jan T. and Marica Vilcek. The painting’s legacy is further underscored by its unusually long institutional life. It was shown as early as 1946 at Stieglitz’s An American Place, and has continued to appear in major institutional retrospectives, including exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou and, most recently, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This sustained public and scholarly attention has firmly established the importance of the Black Place paintings within O’Keeffe’s oeuvre. </div> <div>Georgia O’Keeffe’s <em>Black Place II</em> (1945) belongs to one of the most profound and austere series of her career, inspired by repeated journeys to the Bisti Badlands, a remote, otherworldly area of northwestern New Mexico that she called the Black Place. Deeply compelled by this landscape, O’Keeffe often camped there so she could study its shifting forms and tonal subtleties at different hours of the day. In this work, she reduces the scene to its essentials: two massive hills pressing together, no visible horizon, and a composition defined by gravity, stillness, and quiet monumentality. The sweeping, interlocking forms create a sense of scale that feels both intimate and immense, evoking a landscape experienced as presence rather than panorama. </div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div>Works from the Black Place series are exceptionally rare. Of the fourteen canvases O’Keeffe painted, only four remain in private hands; the remainder are held by major institutions including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, SFMOMA, and the Art Institute of Chicago. As a result, opportunities to encounter a work from this group outside of museum collections are exceedingly uncommon. </div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div><em>Black Place II </em>has an illustrious lineage, from its earliest days in the holdings of Alfred Stieglitz’s famous New York gallery, An American Place, to the noted Philadelphia philanthropist and collector Daniel Dietrich, to the collection of Jan T. and Marica Vilcek. The painting’s legacy is further underscored by its unusually long institutional life. It was shown as early as 1946 at Stieglitz’s An American Place, and has continued to appear in major institutional retrospectives, including exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou and, most recently, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This sustained public and scholarly attention has firmly established the importance of the Black Place paintings within O’Keeffe’s oeuvre. </div> <div>Georgia O’Keeffe’s <em>Black Place II</em> (1945) belongs to one of the most profound and austere series of her career, inspired by repeated journeys to the Bisti Badlands, a remote, otherworldly area of northwestern New Mexico that she called the Black Place. Deeply compelled by this landscape, O’Keeffe often camped there so she could study its shifting forms and tonal subtleties at different hours of the day. In this work, she reduces the scene to its essentials: two massive hills pressing together, no visible horizon, and a composition defined by gravity, stillness, and quiet monumentality. The sweeping, interlocking forms create a sense of scale that feels both intimate and immense, evoking a landscape experienced as presence rather than panorama. </div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div>Works from the Black Place series are exceptionally rare. Of the fourteen canvases O’Keeffe painted, only four remain in private hands; the remainder are held by major institutions including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, SFMOMA, and the Art Institute of Chicago. As a result, opportunities to encounter a work from this group outside of museum collections are exceedingly uncommon. </div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div><em>Black Place II </em>has an illustrious lineage, from its earliest days in the holdings of Alfred Stieglitz’s famous New York gallery, An American Place, to the noted Philadelphia philanthropist and collector Daniel Dietrich, to the collection of Jan T. and Marica Vilcek. The painting’s legacy is further underscored by its unusually long institutional life. It was shown as early as 1946 at Stieglitz’s An American Place, and has continued to appear in major institutional retrospectives, including exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou and, most recently, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This sustained public and scholarly attention has firmly established the importance of the Black Place paintings within O’Keeffe’s oeuvre. </div> <div>Georgia O’Keeffe’s <em>Black Place II</em> (1945) belongs to one of the most profound and austere series of her career, inspired by repeated journeys to the Bisti Badlands, a remote, otherworldly area of northwestern New Mexico that she called the Black Place. Deeply compelled by this landscape, O’Keeffe often camped there so she could study its shifting forms and tonal subtleties at different hours of the day. In this work, she reduces the scene to its essentials: two massive hills pressing together, no visible horizon, and a composition defined by gravity, stillness, and quiet monumentality. The sweeping, interlocking forms create a sense of scale that feels both intimate and immense, evoking a landscape experienced as presence rather than panorama. </div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div>Works from the Black Place series are exceptionally rare. Of the fourteen canvases O’Keeffe painted, only four remain in private hands; the remainder are held by major institutions including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, SFMOMA, and the Art Institute of Chicago. As a result, opportunities to encounter a work from this group outside of museum collections are exceedingly uncommon. </div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div><em>Black Place II </em>has an illustrious lineage, from its earliest days in the holdings of Alfred Stieglitz’s famous New York gallery, An American Place, to the noted Philadelphia philanthropist and collector Daniel Dietrich, to the collection of Jan T. and Marica Vilcek. The painting’s legacy is further underscored by its unusually long institutional life. It was shown as early as 1946 at Stieglitz’s An American Place, and has continued to appear in major institutional retrospectives, including exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou and, most recently, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This sustained public and scholarly attention has firmly established the importance of the Black Place paintings within O’Keeffe’s oeuvre. </div> <div>Georgia O’Keeffe’s <em>Black Place II</em> (1945) belongs to one of the most profound and austere series of her career, inspired by repeated journeys to the Bisti Badlands, a remote, otherworldly area of northwestern New Mexico that she called the Black Place. Deeply compelled by this landscape, O’Keeffe often camped there so she could study its shifting forms and tonal subtleties at different hours of the day. In this work, she reduces the scene to its essentials: two massive hills pressing together, no visible horizon, and a composition defined by gravity, stillness, and quiet monumentality. The sweeping, interlocking forms create a sense of scale that feels both intimate and immense, evoking a landscape experienced as presence rather than panorama. </div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div>Works from the Black Place series are exceptionally rare. Of the fourteen canvases O’Keeffe painted, only four remain in private hands; the remainder are held by major institutions including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, SFMOMA, and the Art Institute of Chicago. As a result, opportunities to encounter a work from this group outside of museum collections are exceedingly uncommon. </div> <br> <br><div> </div> <br> <br><div><em>Black Place II </em>has an illustrious lineage, from its earliest days in the holdings of Alfred Stieglitz’s famous New York gallery, An American Place, to the noted Philadelphia philanthropist and collector Daniel Dietrich, to the collection of Jan T. and Marica Vilcek. The painting’s legacy is further underscored by its unusually long institutional life. It was shown as early as 1946 at Stieglitz’s An American Place, and has continued to appear in major institutional retrospectives, including exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou and, most recently, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This sustained public and scholarly attention has firmly established the importance of the Black Place paintings within O’Keeffe’s oeuvre. </div>
Black Place II194524 x 30 in.(60.96 x 76.2 x 2.54 cm) oil on canvas
Provenance
An American Place, New York
Downtown Gallery, New York
Katrina McCormick Barnes, Denver, Colorado
Medill McCormick Barnes, acquired by descent in 1971
Washburn Gallery, New York
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York
Daniel Dietrich, Philadelphia, until 1985
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York
The Owings Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Private Collection, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2000
The Owings Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Jan T. and Marica Vilcek, New York, 2011–2015
Privat...More...e Collection, gifted from the above
Exhibition
New York, An American Place, Georgia O’Keeffe, February 4 – March 27, 1946, no. 10
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, November 13, 1948 – January 2, 1949
Dallas, Texas, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, An Exhibition of Paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe, February 1 – February 22, 1953, traveled to: Delray Beach, Florida, Mayo Hill Galleries, March 16- April 11, 1953
New York, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Important Recent Acquisitions: Late 19th and Early 20th Century American Paintings, February 2 – 23, 1972
New York, Washburn Gallery, Mind over Matter: Painters of the Immanent Things, September 20 – October 21, 1972
New York, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Georgia O’Keeffe: Selected Paintings and Works on Paper, April 26 – June 6, 1986, traveled to: Dallas, Texas, Gerald Peters Gallery, June 14 – July 14, 1986
Santa Fe, New Mexico, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Georgia O’Keeffe in New Mexico: Architecture, Katsinam, and the Land, May 17 – September 2013 (organizing institution), traveled to: Montclair, New Jersey, Montclair Art Museum, September 28, 2012 – January 20, 2013, Denver, Colorado, Denver Art Museum, February 10 – April 28, 2013
Tulsa, Oklahoma, Philbrook Museum of Art, Phoenix, From New York to New Mexico: Masterworks of American Modernism from the Vilcek Foundation Collection, February 8 – May 3, 2015, traveled to: Arizona, Phoenix Art Museum, June 7 – September 7, 2015, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, September 25, 2015 – January 10, 2016
Santa Fe, New Mexico, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, extended loan, January – April 2016
London, Tate Modern, Georgia O’Keeffe, July 6– October 30, 2016, then traveled to Vienna, Bank Austria Kunstform, December 7, 2016- March 26, 2016, Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, April 22 – July 30, 2017
Santa Fe, New Mexico, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, The Black Place: Georgia O’Keeffe and Michael Namingha, April 28 – August 20, 2018
Corpus Christi, Texas, The Art Museum of South Texas, Masterpieces of American Modernism from the Vilcek Collection of American Art, September 13, 2018 – January 6, 2019
Wichita, Kansas, Wichita Art Museum, Georgia O’Keeffe: Art, Image, Style, March 30 – June 23, 2019, traveled to: Reno, Nevada, Nevada Museum of Art, July 20 – October 20, 2019, West Palm Beach, Florida, Norton Museum of Art, November 21, 2019 – February 9, 2020
Paris, Centre Pompidou Georgia O’Keeffe, September 8 – December 6, 2021, traveled to: Basel, Switzerland, Fondation Beyeler, January 23 – May 22, 2022
Newport, Rhode Island, Newport Art Museum, Georgia O’Keeffe: “Things I Had No Words For,” July 16 – October 16, 2022
San Diego, California, San Diego Museum of Art, O’Keeffe and Moore, May 13-August 27, 2023, traveled to: Albuquerque, New Mexico, Albuquerque Museum, September 30 - December 31, 2023, Montreal, Canada, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, February 10 - June 2, 2024, Boston, Massachusetts, Museum of Fine Arts, October 13, 2024 – January 20, 2025
Literature
Robert M. Coates, “The Art Galleries – Contemporaries, Including the Whitney,” The New
Yorker XXII, February 16, 1946, p. 84
“New York Exhibitions – Georgia O’Keeffe,” MKR’s Art Outlook, April 1946, p. 1, 3 (illustrated)
Whitney Museum of American Art, Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, New York, 1948, no.105
Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, An Exhibition of Paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe, Dallas, 1953, no. 22
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Important Recent Acquisitions: Late 19th and Early 20th Century American Paintings, New York, 1972, no. 52 (illustrated)
Washburn Gallery, Mind over Matter: Painters of the Immanent Things, New York, 1972, no. 7, p.3 (illustrated)
Hilton Kramer, “Artists Looking West: New Shows at A.C.A. Galleries Present Wide Range of Styles and Mediums,” The New York Times, September 23, 1972, p. L27
James R Mellow, “Landscapes: The Real and the Imaginary – in American Art,” The New York Times, October 8, 1972, p. D27
John Perreault, “Does anyone want all that art?,” The Village Voice, October 5, 1972, p. 29
Sanford Schwartz, “New York Letter,” Art International XVI, December 1972, p. 61
Hirschl & Adler, Georgia O’Keeffe: Selected Paintings and Works on Paper, New York, 1986, no. 28 (illustrated and on front cover)
Sharyn Udall, Contested Terrain: Myth and Meanings in Southwest Art, Albuquerque, 1996, pl. 8, pp. xi, 120-134, 174 (illustrated and on front cover)
Barbara Buhler Lynes, Georgia O’Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné. Volume Two, New Haven, Washington, D.C., and Abiquiu, NM, 1999, no. 119, p. 1107 (illustrated)
Barbara Buhler Lynes & Carolyn Kastner, Georgia O’Keeffe in New Mexico: Architecture, Katsinam, and the Land, Santa Fe, NM, 2012, pl. 49, p. 140 (illustrated)
Dan Bischoff, “Artist Georgia O’Keeffe’s Sense of Place,” Star-Ledger, September 30, 2012
Martha Schwendener, “The Spirit of Cultural Objects,” The New York Times, January 4,
2013, p. NJ11
Ray Mark Rinaldi, “Georgia O’Keeffe’s inspired Western art comes to Denver Art Museum,”
Denver Post, February 15, 2013
William C. Agee and Lewis Kachur, Masterpieces of American Modernism: From the Vilcek
Collection, London, 2013, p.11, 160–61, 235, 240, 267 (illustrated)
Tanya Barson & Erin B. Coe, Georgia O’Keeffe, London, 2016, p. 178, 255 (illustrated)
Marta Ruis del Arbol, Georgia O’Keeffe, Paris, 2021, no. 75, p. 40, 206-207, 312 (illustrated)
Anita Feldman, Hannah Higham, Jennifer Laurent, Barbara Buhler Lynes, Ariel Plotek, & Chris Stephens, O’Keeffe and Moore, San Diego, 2023, p. 142 (illustrated)
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Georgia O’Keeffe’s Black Place II (1945) belongs to one of the most profound and austere series of her career, inspired by repeated journeys to the Bisti Badlands, a remote, otherworldly area of northwestern New Mexico that she called the Black Place. Deeply compelled by this landscape, O’Keeffe often camped there so she could study its shifting forms and tonal subtleties at different hours of the day. In this work, she reduces the scene to its essentials: two massive hills pressing together, no visible horizon, and a composition defined by gravity, stillness, and quiet monumentality. The sweeping, interlocking forms create a sense of scale that feels both intimate and immense, evoking a landscape experienced as presence rather than panorama.


 


Works from the Black Place series are exceptionally rare. Of the fourteen canvases O’Keeffe painted, only four remain in private hands; the remainder are held by major institutions including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, SFMOMA, and the Art Institute of Chicago. As a result, opportunities to encounter a work from this group outside of museum collections are exceedingly uncommon.


 


Black Place II has an illustrious lineage, from its earliest days in the holdings of Alfred Stieglitz’s famous New York gallery, An American Place, to the noted Philadelphia philanthropist and collector Daniel Dietrich, to the collection of Jan T. and Marica Vilcek. The painting’s legacy is further underscored by its unusually long institutional life. It was shown as early as 1946 at Stieglitz’s An American Place, and has continued to appear in major institutional retrospectives, including exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou and, most recently, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This sustained public and scholarly attention has firmly established the importance of the Black Place paintings within O’Keeffe’s oeuvre.
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