The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco present Modern Nature: Georgia O’Keeffe and Lake George, organized by The Hyde Collection in association with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. The exhibition, which began its exclusive West Coast presentation at the de Young on February 15 is the first major exhibition to examine the body of work that Georgia O’Keeffe (1887‒1986) created based on her experiences at Lake George.  The exhibit is scheduled to end on May 11, 2014.

Georgia O’Keeffe, Trees in Autumn, 1920/1921. Oil on canvas, 25 1/4 x 20 1/4 (64.1 x 51.4) Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Gift of The Burnett Foundation (1997.06.012) © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

From 1918 until 1934, O’Keeffe lived for part of each year at the family estate of Alfred Stieglitz (1864‒1946) on Lake George in New York's Adirondack Park. The 36-acre property, situated near Lake George Village along the western shoreline, served as a rural retreat for the artist, providing the subject matter for much of her art, and inspiring the spirit of place that she continually evoked in her works from this era, an essential aspect to her evolving modern approach to depicting the natural world. During this highly productive period she created more than 200 paintings on canvas and paper in addition to sketches and pastels, making her Lake George years among the most prolific and transformative of her seven-decade career. This period coincided with O'Keeffe's first critical and popular acclaim as a professional artist, helped define her personal style, and affirmed her passion for natural subject matter prior to her well-known move to the Southwest.

Georgia O'Keeffe, Storm Cloud, Lake George, 1923. Oil on canvas, 18 x 30 1/8 (45.7 x 76.5) Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Gift of The Burnett Foundation (2007.01.018) © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

Colin B. Bailey, director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco noted, "It is especially gratifying to host this pioneering and scholarly exhibition of Georgia O’Keeffe’s Lake George ‒ period works, as the artist's Petunias [1925], featured in the exhibition, is a highlight of our renowned collection of modernist works by artists associated with the Stieglitz circle."

"It is surprising to me how many people separate the objective from the abstract. Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or a tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or a tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they say something. For me that is the very basis of painting. The abstracted is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint.'"

— Georgia O'Keeffe

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