Sky with Flat White Cloud

1962

Georgia O'Keeffe

Painter, American, 1887 - 1986

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Painted late in her career when she was experimenting with unconventional viewpoints, Sky with Flat White Cloud is the second in a series of seven paintings in which Georgia O’Keeffe took inspiration from flying in an airplane high above the earth’s surface, observing the surrounding atmosphere and cloud formations. Excited by the experience of air travel, she remarked, “I’ve often thought how wonderful it would be to simply stand out in space and have nothing!”

In this painting and two others in the group, she divided the vista into three horizontal bands; the largest represents the solid cloudbank, which is surmounted by a narrow band of yellowish haze (possibly inspired by the airplane’s contrail) and the blue atmosphere above. In the other paintings, she represented the clouds as “little oval white clouds, all more or less alike,” as they appear in her last undertaking of the series, the monumental twenty-four-foot-long Sky Above Clouds IV (1965, Art Institute of Chicago).

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Artwork overview

More About this Artwork

This nearly square painting shows an industrial area with buildings, storage silos, a smokestack, and railroad tracks. A mound of brown dirt or other material is in shadow in the lower left corner of the painting. Next to the mound, railroad tracks extend diagonally from the lower center of the painting into the distance to our right. The tracks end at a white building with staggered gray rooflines to our right in the distance. A tall terracotta-red smokestack rises high beyond the white building, smoke pouring out of its top and blending into the clouds above. Just beyond the mound of dirt, piles of white material, perhaps in unseen bins, line the railroad track to our left and lead back to a row ten interconnected, coral-orange silos. The horizon comes about halfway up the painting, and it is lined with a row of long white and gray warehouses. The artist signed and dated the work with brown paint in the lower right corner: “Sheeler 31.”

Scholarly Series:  American Paintings, 1900–1945

Scholarly Article:  American Paintings, 1900–1945: Sky with Flat White Cloud, 1962

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

The artist [1887-1986]; her estate; bequest 1987 to NGA.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1970

  • Georgia O'Keeffe Retrospective Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; San Francisco Museum of Art, 1970-1971, no. 116.

1993

  • Georgia O'Keeffe: American and Modern, The Hayward Gallery, London; Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City; Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan, 1993-1994, no. 85.

1997

  • Birth of the Cool. American Painting - from Georgia O'Keeffe to Christopher Wool, Deichtorhallen Hamburg; Kunsthaus Zürich, 1997, unnumbered catalogue, pl. 2.

1998

  • American Light: Selections from the National Gallery of Art, Art Museum of Western Virginia, Roanoke, May-August 1998, no catalogue.

  • Shifting Visions: O'Keeffe, Guston, Richter, Des Moines Art Center, 1998-1999, no. 33, repro.

  • Treasures of Light: Paintings from the National Gallery of Art, Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, March-April 1998, no catalogue.

2000

  • [O'Keeffe exhibition], Bakersfield Museum of Art, California, 2000.

2001

  • O'Keeffe's O'Keeffes: The Artist's Collection, Milwaukee Art Museum; Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark, 2001-2002, no. 72, repro.

2007

  • Georgia O'Keeffe: Nature and Abstraction, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Vancouver Art Gallery, 2007-2008, no. 72, repro.

2011

  • Georgia O'Keeffe, Fondazione Roma Museo, Palazzo Cipolla, Rome; Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Munich; Helsinki Art Museum Tennis Palace, 2011-2012, no. 65, repro. (Italian catalogue), no. 171, repro. (German and Finnish catalogues).

2013

  • Letzte Bilder: Von Manet bis Kippenberger [Final Works. From Manet to Kippenberger], Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2013, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

2015

  • Collection Conversations: The Chrysler and the National Gallery, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, 2015-2016, no catalogue.

2016

  • Georgia O'Keeffe, Tate Modern, London; Bank Austria Kunstforum, Vienna; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 2016-2017, unnumbered catalogue.

Bibliography

1970

  • Goodrich, Lloyd, and Doris Bry. Georgia O'Keeffe. Exh. cat. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; San Francisco Museum of Art. New York, 1970: 28.

1971

  • Eldredge, Charles C. "Georgia O'Keeffe: the development of an American modern." Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1971: 108-110, fig. 72.

1984

  • Hoffman, Katherine. An Enduring Spirit: The Art of Georgia O’Keeffe. Metuchen, NJ, 1984: 118.

1991

  • Eldredge, Charles C. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1991: 147, 150, repro.

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 252, repro.

1993

  • Eldredge, Charles C. Georgia O'Keeffe: American and Modern Exh. cat. Hayward Gallery, London; El Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City; and Yokohama Museum of Art, 1993-1994. New Haven and London, 1993: 209, color pl. 85.

1999

  • Lynes, Barbara Buhler. Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné. 2 vols. New Haven and London, 1999: 2:902-903, no. 1473, color repro.

2004

  • Joseph S. Czestochowski, ed., Georgia O’Keeffe: Vision of the Sublime. Memphis, 2004: pl. 77

Inscriptions

center right reverse: Sky With Flat White Cloud / 1961?

Wikidata ID

Q20195794

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