Ranchos Church
In this view of a mission church in Ranchos de Taos, O’Keeffe depicts the site as a cluster of rocky forms that seem to grow straight from the soil. In merging the land and the building and reducing both to elemental shapes, O’Keeffe testifies to the naturalness of abstraction. At the same time, she seems to erase the boundary between earth and architecture, the natural and the man-made. O’Keeffe began visiting the Southwest in 1929, and her experience of the region, as well as of its indigenous peoples, bolstered her interest in abstraction.
Artwork Details
- Title: Ranchos Church
- Artist: Georgia O'Keeffe (American, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin 1887–1986 Santa Fe, New Mexico)
- Date: 1930
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 24 × 36 in. (61 × 91.4 cm)
- Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1961
- Object Number: 61.258
- Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art
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