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Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 1/4 inches
CR No. 574
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Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1969
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A large black circle dominates the composition. At the center of the circle, a small point of white light glows. The light is situated at the meeting point between two thin white lines, one vertical and the other horizontal.
CR No. 574
Title (1999 Catalogue Raisonné)
Black Abstraction
Source of title: Whitney Archive, Downtown Gallery Archive, Abiquiú Notebooks, 1933 New York (An American Place) and 1941 (An American Place–October) exhibition checklists.
Alternate Title (1999 Catalogue Raisonné)
Abstraction Black
General Remarks
Inscriptions in Metropolitan Museum of Art files: OK ☆{5star} (graphite); "'Black Abstraction'/by/Georgia O'Keeffe" (Alfred Stieglitz, An American Place, black ink). Whitney Archive indicates, "See gallery photograph. Infor. from Miss Bry (An Amer. Place) July 1949: On permanent loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art from Georgia O'Keeffe as part of the Alfred Stieglitz Coll." Pictured in 1928 New York (Intimate Gallery) Norman installation photograph, Appendix III, figure 29A. O'Keeffe wrote: "I was on a stretcher in a large room, two nurses hovering over me, a very large bright skylight above me. I had decided to be conscious as long as possible. . . . the skylight began to whirl and slowly became smaller and smaller in a black space. I lifted my right arm overhead and dropped it. As the skylight became a small white dot in the black room, I lifted my left arm over my head. As it started to drop and the white dot became very small, I was gone. A few weeks later all this became the Black Abstraction" (Georgia O'Keeffe [1976], unpaginated, text accompanying entry 54). Reproduced and titled Abstraction – Black in America & Alfred Stieglitz (1934). (Source: Lynes, 1999)
Inscriptions
Backing: "Box 13 / on 2" (DB, black ink) (Source: Lynes, 1999)
Technique
Oil Painting
Materials
Oil on canvas
1966
1966
Amon Carter Museum of American Art (as Georgia O'Keeffe: An Exhibition of the Work of the Artist from 1915 to 1966)
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFA H) (as Georgia O'Keeffe: An Exhibition of the Work of the Artist from 1915 to 1966)
1970–1971
Whitney Museum of American Art (as Georgia O'Keeffe)
Art Institute of Chicago (as Georgia O'Keeffe)
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) (as Georgia O'Keeffe)
1987–1989
National Gallery of Art (NGA) (as Georgia O'Keeffe)
Art Institute of Chicago (as Georgia O'Keeffe)
Dallas Museum of Art (as Georgia O'Keeffe)
Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) (as Georgia O'Keeffe)
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) (as Georgia O'Keeffe)
1993
Martin-Gropius-Bau (as American Art in the 20th Century: Painting and Sculpture 1913–1993)
Royal Academy of Arts (as American Art in the 20th Century: Painting and Sculpture 1913–1993)
1998
2009–2010
Whitney Museum of American Art (as Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction)
The Phillips Collection (as Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction)
Georgia O'Keeffe Museum (as Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction)
2007–2008
Norton Museum of Art (as Georgia O'Keeffe: Circling Around Abstraction and Georgia O'Keeffe, Illuminated: Photographs by Tony Vaccaro)
Georgia O'Keeffe Museum (as Georgia O'Keeffe: Circling Around Abstraction and Georgia O'Keeffe, Illuminated: Photographs by Tony Vaccaro)
1928
Intimate Gallery (as O'Keeffe Exhibition)
Intimate Gallery (as O'Keeffe Exhibition)
2021–2022
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza (as Georgia O'Keeffe: The Painter's Lens)
Centre Georges Pompidou (as Georgia O'Keeffe: The Painter's Lens)
Fondation Beyeler (as Georgia O'Keeffe: The Painter's Lens)
1943
1946
1958
Waldo Frank, Lewis Mumford, Dorothy Norman, Paul Rosenfeld, and Harold Rugg, ed. America and Alfred Stieglitz: A Collective Portrait. Garden City, N. Y., 1934, pl. XXID, as "Abstration–Black".
James Thrall Soby in New Art in America: Fifty Painters of the 20th Century. Ed. John I. H. Baur. Greenwich, Conn., 1957, ill. p. 108.
Peter Plagens. "A Georgia O'Keeffe Retrospective in Texas." Artforum 4 (May 1966), p. 29, ill.
Dorothy Seiberling. "Horizons of a Pioneer: Georgia O'Keeffe in New Mexico." Life 64 (March 1, 1968), pp. 9, 40–41, ill.
George Heard Hamilton. "The Alfred Stieglitz Collection." Metropolitan Museum Journal 3 (1970), p. 392.
Henry Geldzahler in "Twentieth Century Art." The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Notable Acquisitions, 1965–1975. New York, 1975, p. 212, ill.
Georgia O'Keeffe. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1976, text facing pl. 54, ill.
Laurie Lisle. Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1980, pp. 184, 357.
Kathleen Howard, ed. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide. New York, 1983, p. 416, no. 13, ill. (color).
Lisa Mintz Messinger. "Georgia O'Keeffe." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 42 (Fall 1984), pp. 23–25, 60, ill.
Jan Garden Castro. The Art and Life of Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1985, p. 102.
Michael Desmond in 20th Century Masters from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Exh. cat., Australian National Gallery. Canberra, 1986, p. 56, ill. (color).
Laurie Lisle. Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe. Albuquerque, 1986, pp. 136, 299.
Vera Graaf. "Georgia O'Keefes Leben." Du no. 5 (May 1987), pp. 16–18, ill.
Lisa Mintz Messinger. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1988, pp. 42, 44–45, ill. (1989 ed., same pagination).
Barbara Buhler Lynes. O'Keeffe, Stieglitz, and the Critics. Ann Arbor, Mich., 1989, p. 342 n. 8.
Roxana Robinson. Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life. New York, 1989, p. 300.
Christopher Merrill and Ellen Bradbury, ed. From the Faraway Nearby: Georgia O'Keeffe as Icon. Reading, Mass., 1992, pp. 61–62, 101, fig. 3.
Alexandra Arrowsmith Thomas West, ed. Two Lives: Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz; a Conversation in Paintings and Photographs. Exh. cat., Phillips Collection, Washington, D. C. New York, 1992, p. 17.
Elizabeth Montgomery. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1993, pp. 77–79, ill.
Charles Child Eldredge. Georgia O'Keeffe: American and Modern. Exh. cat., Hayward Gallery, London. New Haven, 1993, p. 25.
Maria Costantino. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1994, p. 29.
Jula Dech. Georgia O'Keeffe: Gemälde. Munich, 1995, pl. 8.
Bram Dijkstra. Georgia O'Keeffe and the Eros of Place. Princeton, 1998, pp. 228–29, 231, fig. 68.
Barbara Buhler Lynes. Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné. New Haven, Conn., 1999, vol. 1, p. 330, no. 574, ill., vol. 2, p. 1117, app. 3, fig. 29A.
Lisa Mintz Messinger. Georgia O'Keeffe. London, 2001, pp. 95, 97, 99, fig. 64.
Barbara Buhler Lynes with Russell Bowman. O'Keeffe's O'Keeffes: The Artist's Collection. Exh. cat., Milwaukee Art Museum. New York, 2001, p. 169 (app. 2: "Works Given to Institutions during the Artist's Lifetime").
Hunter Drohojowska-Philp. Full Bloom: The Art and Life of Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 2004, p. 276, pl. between pp. 376 and 377.
Janet Souter. Georgia O'Keeffe. London, 2005, p. 26, fig. 22 (incorrect orientation).
Wanda Corn. "Telling Tales: Georgia O'Keeffe on Georgia O'Keeffe." American Art 23 (Summer 2009), p. 69, fig. 12.
Lisa Mintz Messinger in Stieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O'Keeffe. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ed. Lisa Mintz Messinger. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2011, pp. 14, 200, 279–80, no. 184, ill. (color).
Sarah Greenough, ed. My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Vol. 1, 1915–1933. New Haven, Conn., 2011, p. 669.
Joachim Homann in Joachim Homann. Night Vision: Noctures in American Art, 1860-1960. Exh. cat., Bowdoin College Museum of Art. Brunswick, Me., 2015, pp. 139–41, 149, 171, colorpl. 63.
Sophie Bernard in Georgia O'Keeffe et ses amis photographes. Exh. cat., Musée de Grenoble. Grenoble, 2015, pp. 50, 198, no. 4, fig. 30 (color), ill. pp. 66–67 (color).
Katherine M. Bourguignon in Katherine M. Bourguignon Lauren Kroiz and Leo G. Mazow. America's Cool Modernism: O'Keeffe to Hopper. Exh. cat., Ashmolean Museum. Oxford, England, 2018, p. 31, no. 54, ill. (color) pp. 31, 150.
Marta Ruiz del Árbol. Georgia O'Keeffe. Exh. cat., Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza. Madrid, 2021, p. 310, no. 53, ill. (color) and ill. p. 171 (color).
Adrienne Brown in Georgia O'Keeffe: "My New Yorks". Ed. Sarah Kelly Oehler and Annelise K. Madsen. Exh. cat., Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, 2024, p. 81, fig. 7 (color).
The artist (1927–69; on extended loan to MMA, 1949–69; her gift as part of the Alfred Stieglitz Collection to MMA) (Source: The Met, 2025)
© Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met)
Version History
Core fields last updated 3/30/2026
Last verified by current collection
Source System ID
8644
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Conservation
Information is from the most recently submitted report, please contact the current owner to verify updated details.Published with corresponding artwork entry in Georgia O’Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné (Lynes, 1999), this historical conservation information documents treatment decisions made during the artist’s lifetime. Lynes quotes information found on backing labels, and, when noted, from other sources.
Abiquiú Notebooks indicates, "Keck: June, 1949. Cleaned and sprayed" [not verified].
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Georgia O'Keeffe. Black Abstraction, 1927. Access O’Keeffe, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, https://access-ok.okeeffemuseum.org/object/8644.