Georgia O’Keeffe

Artist Tony Vaccaro (American, 1922 - 2022)

Date1961

Dimensions18 x 14 5/8 in. (45.8 x 37.2 cm)

MediumColor Photograph

ClassificationPhotographs

Credit LineGift of Photography in the Fine Arts

Object number

1969.318

Not on View

Label TextMichael A. Vaccaro (also known as Tony Vaccaro) depicts 73-year-old artist Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) holding her 1945 painting Pelvis Series, Red with Yellow. Made between 1943 and 1947, O’Keeffe’s series of paintings depicted variations of animal pelvic bones. The painting in the photograph is a particularly abstract composition with bold, expressive colors. While you can catch glimpses of the New Mexico landscape where O’Keeffe lived for more than 40 years, the focus is on the painting, which she herself frames. As her friend novelist Jean Toomer once stated about Pelvis Series, O’Keeffe painted “the universe through the portal of a bone.” After working as a battlefield photographer during World War II, Vaccaro became known for photographing celebrities and fashion for publications such as Life and Look. His photographs of O’Keeffe were taken for an article about women artists published in Look magazine in 1960.Exhibition HistoryToledo Museum of Art, Framing Fame: 19th- & 20th-century Celebrity Photography, March 4–June 4, 2017.