Georgia O’Keeffe: Grey, Blue and Black – Pink Circle (1929)

“Georgia O’Keeffe’s early abstractions, although not as well known as her later southwestern paintings, played a pivotal role in the development of American modernism. Grey Blue & Black—Pink Circle is the culmination of O’Keeffe’s Special series, a body of abstract drawings and paintings that she made during the 1920s. She created these works outside the influence of the New York mainstream and before her initial contact with the works of Wassily Kandinsky, whose treatise On the Spiritual in Art had a measurable impact on her later abstract style.

The nodes in the center of the painting recall the headdress of Hopi kachina dancers (and the headdresses of the eponymous kachina dolls); the surrounding whorls of color amplify the suggested motion of the dance and the consonant rhythms of the universe…”

Adapted from

• Eleanor…