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GEORGIA O'KEEFFE (1887-1986)

$7,950,000

KÜNSTLER BIO ANFORDERNPDF HERUNTERLADEN
 
<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 Zoll(60,96 x 76,2 x 2,54 cm) Öl auf Leinwand
Provenienz
An American Place, New York
Downtown Gallery, New York
Katrina McCormick Barnes, Denver, Colorado
Medill McCormick Barnes, 1971 durch Erbschaft erworben
Washburn Gallery, New York
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York
Daniel Dietrich, Philadelphia, bis 1985
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York
The Owings Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Privatsammlung, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2000
The Owings Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Jan T. und Marica Vilcek, New York, 2011–2015
Privat...Mehr.....Sammlung, eine Schenkung von den oben genannten
Ausstellung
New York, An American Place, Georgia O’Keeffe, 4. Februar – 27. März 1946, Nr. 10
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Jahresausstellung zeitgenössischer amerikanischer Malerei, 13. November 1948 – 2. Januar 1949
Dallas, Texas, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Ausstellung mit Gemälden von Georgia O’Keeffe, 1. Februar – 22. Februar 1953, anschließend in: Delray Beach, Florida, Mayo Hill Galleries, 16. März – 11. April 1953
New York, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Bedeutende Neuerwerbungen: Amerikanische Gemälde des späten 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhunderts, 2. bis 23. Februar 1972
New York, Washburn Gallery, „Mind over Matter: Maler der immanenten Dinge“, 20. September – 21. Oktober 1972
New York, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Georgia O’Keeffe: Ausgewählte Gemälde und Arbeiten auf Papier, 26. April – 6. Juni 1986, anschließend in: Dallas, Texas, Gerald Peters Gallery, 14. Juni – 14. Juli 1986
Santa Fe, New Mexico, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, „Georgia O’Keeffe in New Mexico: Architektur, Katsinam und das Land“, 17. Mai – September 2013 (veranstaltende Institution), anschließend in: Montclair, New Jersey, Montclair Art Museum, 28. September 2012 – 20. Januar 2013, Denver, Colorado, Denver Art Museum, 10. Februar – 28. April 2013
Tulsa, Oklahoma, Philbrook Museum of Art, Phoenix, „Von New York nach New Mexico: Meisterwerke der amerikanischen Moderne aus der Sammlung der Vilcek Foundation“, 8. Februar – 3. Mai 2015, anschließend in: Arizona, Phoenix Art Museum, 7. Juni – 7. September 2015, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, 25. September 2015 – 10. Januar 2016
Santa Fe, New Mexico, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, verlängerte Leihgabe, Januar – April 2016
London, Tate Modern, Georgia O’Keeffe, 6. Juli bis 30. Oktober 2016, anschließend in Wien, Bank Austria Kunstform, 7. Dezember 2016 bis 26. März 2016, Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, 22. April bis 30. Juli 2017
Santa Fe, New Mexico, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, „The Black Place: Georgia O’Keeffe und Michael Namingha“, 28. April – 20. August 2018
Corpus Christi, Texas, Kunstmuseum von Südtexas, Meisterwerke der amerikanischen Moderne aus der Vilcek-Sammlung amerikanischer Kunst, 13. September 2018 – 6. Januar 2019
Wichita, Kansas, Wichita Art Museum, Georgia O’Keeffe: Kunst, Bild, Stil, 30. März – 23. Juni 2019, anschließend in: Reno, Nevada, Nevada Museum of Art, 20. Juli – 20. Oktober 2019, West Palm Beach, Florida, Norton Museum of Art, 21. November 2019 – 9. Februar 2020
Paris, Centre Pompidou: Georgia O’Keeffe, 8. September – 6. Dezember 2021; anschließend in Basel, Schweiz, Fondation Beyeler, 23. Januar – 22. Mai 2022
Newport, Rhode Island, Newport Art Museum, Georgia O’Keeffe: „Things I Had No Words For“, 16. Juli – 16. Oktober 2022
San Diego, Kalifornien, San Diego Museum of Art, „O’Keeffe and Moore“, 13. Mai bis 27. August 2023, anschließend in: Albuquerque, New Mexico, Albuquerque Museum, 30. September bis 31. Dezember 2023, Montreal, Kanada, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 10. Februar – 2. Juni 2024, Boston, Massachusetts, Museum of Fine Arts, 13. Oktober 2024 – 20. Januar 2025
Literaturhinweise
Robert M. Coates, „Die Kunstgalerien – Zeitgenossen, darunter das Whitney“, The New
Yorker XXII, 16. Februar 1946, S. 84
„Ausstellungen in New York – Georgia O’Keeffe“, MKR’s Art Outlook, April 1946, S. 1, 3 (abgebildet)
Whitney Museum of American Art, Jahresausstellung zeitgenössischer amerikanischer Malerei, New York, 1948, Nr. 105
Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Ausstellung mit Gemälden von Georgia O’Keeffe, Dallas, 1953, Nr. 22
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Wichtige Neuerwerbungen: Amerikanische Gemälde des späten 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhunderts, New York, 1972, Nr. 52 (abgebildet)
Washburn Gallery, „Mind over Matter: Painters of the Immanent Things“, New York, 1972, Nr. 7, S. 3 (abgebildet)
Hilton Kramer, „Künstler mit Blick nach Westen: Neue Ausstellungen in den A.C.A.-Galerien präsentieren eine breite Palette an Stilen und Medien“, The New York Times, 23. September 1972, S. L27
James R. Mellow, „Landschaften: Das Reale und das Imaginäre – in der amerikanischen Kunst“, The New York Times, 8. Oktober 1972, S. D27
John Perreault, „Will denn niemand all diese Kunst?“, The Village Voice, 5. Oktober 1972, S. 29
Sanford Schwartz, „New York Letter“, Art International XVI, Dezember 1972, S. 61
Hirschl & Adler, Georgia O’Keeffe: Ausgewählte Gemälde und Arbeiten auf Papier, New York, 1986, Nr. 28 (abgebildet und auf dem Titelblatt)
Sharyn Udall, „Contested Terrain: Myth and Meanings in Southwest Art“, Albuquerque, 1996, Tafel 8, S. xi, 120–134, 174 (abgebildet und auf dem Titelblatt)
Barbara Buhler Lynes, Georgia O’Keeffe: Werkverzeichnis. Band 2, New Haven, Washington, D.C., und Abiquiu, NM, 1999, Nr. 119, S. 1107 (abgebildet)
Barbara Buhler Lynes & Carolyn Kastner, Georgia O’Keeffe in New Mexico: Architektur, Katsinam und das Land, Santa Fe, NM, 2012, Tafel 49, S. 140 (abgebildet)
Dan Bischoff, „Das Ortsgefühl der Künstlerin Georgia O’Keeffe“, Star-Ledger, 30. September 2012
Martha Schwendener, „Der Geist der Kulturgüter“, The New York Times, 4. Januar,
2013, S. NJ11
Ray Mark Rinaldi: „Von Georgia O’Keeffe inspirierte Kunst des Westens kommt ins Denver Art Museum“
Denver Post, 15. Februar 2013
William C. Agee und Lewis Kachur, Meisterwerke der amerikanischen Moderne: Aus der Sammlung Vilcek
Sammlung, London, 2013, S. 11, 160–161, 235, 240, 267 (abgebildet)
Tanya Barson & Erin B. Coe, Georgia O’Keeffe, London, 2016, S. 178, 255 (abgebildet)
Marta Ruis del Arbol, Georgia O’Keeffe, Paris, 2021, Nr. 75, S. 40, 206–207, 312 (abgebildet)
Anita Feldman, Hannah Higham, Jennifer Laurent, Barbara Buhler Lynes, Ariel Plotek und Chris Stephens, O’Keeffe and Moore, San Diego, 2023, S. 142 (abgebildet)
...WENIGER.....
Georgia O’Keeffes „Black Place II“ (1945) gehört zu einer der tiefgründigsten und strengsten Serien ihrer Karriere, inspiriert von wiederholten Reisen in die Bisti Badlands, eine abgelegene, jenseitig anmutende Gegend im Nordwesten von New Mexico, die sie „Black Place“ nannte. Tief beeindruckt von dieser Landschaft schlug O’Keeffe dort oft ihr Lager auf, um ihre sich wandelnden Formen und Farbnuancen zu verschiedenen Tageszeiten zu studieren. In diesem Werk reduziert sie die Szene auf das Wesentliche: zwei massive Hügel, die sich aneinanderpressen, kein sichtbarer Horizont und eine Komposition, die von Schwerkraft, Stille und ruhiger Monumentalität geprägt ist. Die geschwungenen, ineinander verschlungenen Formen erzeugen ein Gefühl von Weite, das zugleich intim und unermesslich wirkt und eine Landschaft heraufbeschwört, die eher als Präsenz denn als Panorama erlebt wird.


 


Werke aus der Black Place-Serie sind äußerst selten. Von den vierzehn Leinwänden, die O’Keeffe gemalt hat, befinden sich nur noch vier in Privatbesitz; die übrigen werden von bedeutenden Institutionen wie dem Metropolitan Museum of Art, dem SFMOMA und dem Art Institute of Chicago aufbewahrt. Daher sind Gelegenheiten, ein Werk aus dieser Gruppe außerhalb von Museumssammlungen zu sehen, äußerst selten.


 


„Black Place II“ blickt auf eine illustre Geschichte zurück, von seinen Anfängen in der Sammlung von Alfred Stieglitz’ berühmter New Yorker Galerie „An American Place“ über den bekannten Philanthropen und Sammler Daniel Dietrich aus Philadelphia bis hin zur Sammlung von Jan T. und Marica Vilcek. Das Vermächtnis des Gemäldes wird durch seine ungewöhnlich lange institutionelle Laufbahn noch unterstrichen. Es wurde bereits 1946 in Stieglitz’ „An American Place“ gezeigt und ist seitdem in bedeutenden institutionellen Retrospektiven zu sehen, darunter Ausstellungen im Centre Pompidou und zuletzt im Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Diese anhaltende öffentliche und wissenschaftliche Aufmerksamkeit hat die Bedeutung der „Black Place“-Gemälde innerhalb von O’Keeffes Œuvre fest etabliert.
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