Georgia O'Keeffe

Dead Tree Bear Lake Taos

Georgia O’Keeffe’s Dead Tree Bear Lake, Taos was produced during the artist’s first trip to New Mexico. A twisting grey tree juts from the foreground of the painting, extending up and beyond our reach. Juxtaposed against thriving, red-wooded trees, O’Keeffe’s decaying subject is a striking counterpoint to the lush landscape surrounding Bear Lake. In viewing this land, O’Keeffe prioritized imagery through her modernist lens. Her style synthesizes the rugged forest trees into a smooth and almost graphic polychromatic surface. The vertical rhythm of the work exudes a sense of masculinity in the forest, akin to her precisionist cityscapes of the 1920s. This early encounter with the western landscape suggests a transition in O’Keeffe’s paintings, the dead tree serving as an aggressive yet natural disruption.