Winter Road I
1963
Painter, American, 1887 - 1986

Georgia O’Keeffe took inspiration from the road that passed by her house in Abiquiú, New Mexico, for a group of photographs, drawings, and paintings in the early 1960s. She explained, “The road fascinates me with its ups and downs, and finally its wide sweep as it speeds toward the wall of my hilltop to go past me. I had made two or three snaps of it with a camera. For one of them I turned the camera at a sharp angle to get all the road. It was accidental that I made the road seem to stand up in the air, but it amused me and I began drawing and painting it as a new shape.”
The quasi-abstract, asymmetric composition is two-dimensional, with no indication of spatial recession. The elegant, undulating brown line that signifies the road meanders across the canvas. O’Keeffe’s unusual interpretation of the landscape was also influenced by looking down to the earth from a high vantage point during air travel. The emphasis on balance and unfilled space and the confident line, all reminiscent of sumi-e ink painting, may reflect O’Keeffe’s long-held interest in Japanese and Chinese art.
Artwork overview
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Medium
oil on canvas
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Credit Line
-
Dimensions
overall: 55.9 × 45.7 cm (22 × 18 in.)
framed: 77.79 × 67.63 × 7.94 cm (30 5/8 × 26 5/8 × 3 1/8 in.) -
Accession
1995.4.1
More About this Artwork
Artwork history & notes
Provenance
The artist [1887-1986]; estate of the artist; 1993 to The Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation, Abiquiú, New Mexico; gift 1995 to NGA.
Associated Names
Exhibition History
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, repro. on cover, as The Winter Road.
Georgia O'Keeffe, The Art Museum, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, September-October 1966, unnumbered catalogue.
1970
Georgia O'Keeffe, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; San Francisco Museum of Art, 1970-1971, no. 118, repro., as The Winter Road.
1987
Georgia O'Keeffe: 1887-1986, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Art Institute of Chicago; Dallas Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1987-1989, no. 115, repro. (exh. cat. titled Georgia O'Keeffe: Art and Letters).
1993
Georgia O'Keeffe: American and Modern, The Hayward Gallery, London; El Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City; Yokohama Museum of Art, 1993-1994, no. 83, repro.
1997
Birth of the Cool. American Painting - from Georgia O'Keeffe to Christopher Wool, Deichtorhallen Hamburg; Kunsthaus Zürich, 1997, unnumbered catalogue, pl. 3.
1998
O'Keeffe and Texas, Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, 1998, no. 48, repro.
1999
Georgia O'Keeffe: The Poetry of Things, Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe; Dallas Museum of Art; Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 1999-2000, unnumbered cat., pl. 61, fig. 26 (shown only in Washington).
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. 73, repro.
2006
Georgia O'Keeffe: Color and Conservation, Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson; Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe; Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, 2006, unnumbered catalogue, repro.
2007
Georgia O'Keeffe: Nature and Abstraction, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Vancouver Art Gallery, 2007-2008, no. 74, repro.
2013
Im Tempel des Ich. Das Künstlerhaus als Gesamtkunstwerk Europa und Amerika 1800-1948 [In the Temple of Self. [The Artist’s Residence as a Total Work of Art, Europe and America 1800-1949], Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, 2013-2014, no. 17 of the O'Keeffe section of the catalogue, repro.
2016
Georgia O'Keeffe, Tate Modern, London; Bank Austria Kunstforum, Vienna; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 2016-2017, unnumbered catalogue.
2017
Georgia O'Keeffe: Living Modern, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, 2017 - 2020, not in catalogue (shown only in West Palm Beach).
2019
Aftereffect: Georgia O’Keeffe and Contemporary Painting, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, 2019, no catalogue.
2021
Georgia O'Keeffe, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, 2021 - 2022, unnumbered catalogue, repro.
Bibliography
1971
Eldredge, Charles C. "Georgia O'Keeffe: the development of an American modern." Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1971: 102-103, fig. 70.
1976
O’Keeffe, Georgia. Georgia O’Keeffe. New York, 1976: opposite pl. 104.
1984
Hoffman, Katherine. An Enduring Spirit: The Art of Georgia O’Keeffe. Metuchen, NJ, 1984: 117-118.
1987
Cowart, Jack, Juan Hamilton, and Sarah Greenough. Georgia O'Keeffe: Art and Letters. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Art Institute of Chicago; Dallas Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1987-1989. Washington, 1987: color pl. 115.
1991
Eldredge, Charles C. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1991: 146, 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. 83.
1999
Lynes, Barbara Buhler. Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné. 2 vols. New Haven and London, 1999: 2:907, no. 1477, color repro.
2004
Joseph S. Czestochowski, ed., Georgia O’Keeffe: Vision of the Sublime. Memphis, 2004: pl. 78.
2016
Barson, Tanya, ed. Georgia O'Keeffe. Exh. cat. Tate Modern, London; Bank Austria Kunstforum, Vienna; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 2016-1017. London, 2016: 152 fig. 136, 153, 187, 225.
Wikidata ID
Q20195975