Blue and Green Music
Georgia O'Keeffe, 1919
Image not available: work still under copyright
Blue and Green Music is an oil on canvas that Georgia O'Keeffe painted between 1919 and 1921, during her years in New York with Alfred Stieglitz. It belongs to a group of works in which she sought to translate music into visual terms. Rather than depicting instruments or performers, O'Keeffe builds the canvas from geometric shapes and contrasts between hard and soft edges, aiming to suggest the rhythm and movement a listener perceives in a melody. The palette of blues and greens moves through a range of tones, as if each shade corresponded to a variation in sound. Her interest in this approach is linked to the ideas of the Russian painter Vasily Kandinsky, who argued that painting should draw closer to music in order to express itself without relying on literary references. The painting entered Stieglitz's collection, and after his death the artist gave it to the Art Institute of Chicago in his memory.
- Painter
- Georgia O'Keeffe
- Date
- 1919
- Medium
- oil paint, canvas
- Dimensions
- 58 × 48 cm
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago