# 4748e - 2013 First-Class Forever Stamp - Modern Art in America: Georgia O'Keeffe's "Black Mesa Landscape"

Issue Date: March 7, 2013
City: New York, NY

Quantity: 1,950,000
Printed By: Avery Dennison
Printing Method: Photogravure
Perforations: Serpentine Die Cut 10 1/2
Color: multicolored

Georgia O’Keeffe’s painting Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico/ Out Back of Marie’s II is one of twelve featured on the Modern Art in America: 1913-1931 stamps.

 

Most well-known today for her close-up paintings of flowers, Georgia O’Keeffe found her greatest inspiration in the rugged deserts of New Mexico.

 

O’Keeffe (1887-1986) decided to be an artist at the age of 10 and had won several honors before temporarily giving up her art career in 1908. She believed she would never distinguish herself from other artists in the then-common Realist style. However, in an art class four years later, she discovered Arthur Wesley Dow, who encouraged artists to express themselves with line, color, and shading.

 

Experimenting with these ideas, O’Keeffe began creating her signature paintings of large-scale flowers at close range in the mid-1920s. As popular as they were, many people suggested they were representations of female anatomy, which O’Keeffe denied.

 

In 1929, O’Keeffe set out for a change of scenery and discovered New Mexico. She was immediately inspired and would spend most of the rest of her life there. She was so moved by the landscape that she hoped if she painted it enough, God would give it to her.

 

After her death, O’Keeffe received the distinct honor of having a fossilized species of archosaur named after her – Effigia okeeffeae (O’Keeffe’s Ghost), for her numerous paintings of and longtime interest in the area.