O’Keeffe and Moore

A one-of-a-kind exhibition, O’Keeffe and Moore compares the work of two iconic modernists: American painter Georgia O’Keeffe and British sculptor Henry Moore.

While these artists worked on different continents, their careers and contributions to the artistic development of the 20th century reveal many parallels.

The common ground between these two artists can be found in the inspiration each took from nature, and their enduring association with the landscapes that were an essential part of their life’s work.

Moore relocated from London to the verdant sheep fields of Hertfordshire during the Blitz in 1940, while O’Keeffe left the bustle of New York to settle permanently in New Mexico in 1949, becoming inextricably linked to the striking desert terrain.

Before moving to New Mexico, O’Keeffe collected animal skulls she found during visits to the Southwest, bringing them back with her to New York to study and paint.

Meanwhile, Moore referred to his maquette studio as his “library of natural forms” and drew from its vast resources daily. He mused: “The value of certain types of modern sculpture may be that it opens people’s eyes to nature, that they pick up things which they wouldn’t look at otherwise; and they look at things with a new eye.”

This sentiment is echoed by O’Keeffe: “I have picked flowers where I found them. I have picked up sea shells and rocks and pieces of wood where there were sea shells and rocks and pieces of wood that I liked…I have used these things to say what is to me the wideness and wonder of the world as I live in it.”

In 1986 both Modernist icons passed away and with their passing came the end of a watershed artistic era. The artists met in 1946 during Moore’s retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. O’Keeffe had her retrospective there, MoMA’s first of a woman artist, only a few months earlier.

O’Keeffe and Moore has been assembled from national and international collections, including masterpieces from the intimate to the monumental in scale.

Curated by Anita Feldman, The San Diego Museum of Art’s Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs and Education, the exhibition was originally shown at The San Diego Museum of Art (13 May – 27 August 2023) and will travel on to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (5 February – 9 June 2024).