Line and Curve

1927

Georgia O'Keeffe

Painter, American, 1887 - 1986

Created with diffuse tones of cool gray and white, a curve cuts across a line running down the center of this vertical, abstract painting. The vertical line is shaded to the right with smoke gray at the top and darker, charcoal gray near the center. The arc of the curve sweeps down from the left of center along the top edge, and reaches about halfway down the right edge. The shading within the circle is darker where the line cuts down the top of the form. An elongated, wedge-shaped wash of violet extends from the top to about halfway down the left side of the line.
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Executed in 1927, Line and Curve is the last in a group of four highly abstract, predominantly white, narrow vertical compositions whose imagery can be traced in part to Georgia O’Keeffe’s interest in Manhattan’s modern architecture. As its title indicates, Line and Curve consists of a simple juxtaposition of a vertical line running down the center of the canvas intersected by a sweeping curve that extends through the upper right quadrant of the composition. The painting verges on pure abstraction while combining architectonic elements with hints of more natural, curving, organic forms. The mottled, gently undulating, white paint surface with evanescent violet hues and the shading of the vertical line suggest the shallow spatial recessions of New York’s crowded spaces. The gray-white palette evokes a cloudy sky.

During the mid-1920s, O’Keeffe and her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, lived on the 30th floor of the newly opened Shelton Hotel on Lexington Avenue at 49th Street in New York City. This location inspired O’Keeffe to paint birds-eye views of the East River as well as street-level views of a number of the skyscrapers located in her midtown Manhattan neighborhood. O’Keeffe had first experimented with abstract forms in 1915, and the interplay between abstraction and representation would always inform her style. In 1976 she stated: “The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint.”

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Artwork overview

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  American Paintings, 1900–1945: Line and Curve, 1927

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

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

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

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1933

  • Georgia O'Keeffe: Paintings--New and Some Old, An American Place, New York, 1933, no. 23, as Abstraction, White, Grey and Violet.

1940

  • Some Marins, Some O'Keeffes, Some Doves, An American Place, New York, 1940, no. 14.

1941

  • Arthur G. Dove, John Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe, Alfred Stieglitz, An American Place, New York, 1941, no. 10.

1946

  • Georgia O'Keeffe: Retrospective Exhibition, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1946, no. 26.

1947

  • Alfred Stieglitz Exhibition: His Collection, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1947, no. 79 (circulated to Art Institute of Chicago in 1948; see next citation).

1948

  • Alfred Stieglitz: His Photographs and His Collection, Art Institute of Chicago, 1948.

1966

  • Georgia O'Keeffe: An Exhibition of the Work of the Artist from 1915 to 1966, Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, March-July 1966, unnumbered catalogue.

  • Georgia O'Keeffe, The Art Museum, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, September-October 1966, unnumbered catalogue.

1986

  • Georgia O'Keeffe: Paintings, Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, 1986-1987, unnumbered catalogue.

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. 40, repro.

2009

  • Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, 2009-2010, unnumbered catalogue, pl. 94.

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, fig. 37 (shown only in London).

2017

  • Georgia O'Keeffe: Living Modern, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn; Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, 2017 - 2020, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

Bibliography

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 249, repro.

1999

  • Lynes, Barbara Buhler. Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné. 2 vols. New Haven and London, 1999: 1:328, no. 572, color repro.

2000

  • Kirsh, Andrea, and Rustin S. Levenson. Seeing Through Paintings: Physical Examination in Art Historical Studies. Materials and Meaning in the Fine Arts 1. New Haven, 2000: 264.

Inscriptions

across top reverse, in pencil: Line and Curve-27 / signed within five-pointed star: OK

Wikidata ID

Q20192689

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