Winter Road I

1963

Georgia O'Keeffe

Painter, American, 1887 - 1986

A single black line swells and tapers as it curves from the upper left corner of this white canvas across to the right edge, and back to near the lower left corner in this abstract painting. The line makes a short, bracket-like form at the upper left before the large curve, like the belly of a capital D, spans the rest of the height of the canvas.  
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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.

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Gift of The Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation

  • 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

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: Winter Road I, 1963

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

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