Brief
Skip to main content Skip to navigation Close dialogue 1 / 3 Next image Previous image Toggle caption Print subscriptions Search jobs Sign in Eur Europe edition UK edition US edition Australia edition International edition The Guardian - Back to home The Guardian News Opinion Sport Culture Lifestyle Show more Hide expanded menu News View all News World news UK news Climate crisis Ukraine Environment Science Global development Football Tech Business Obituaries Opinion View all Opinion The Guardian view Columnists Cartoons Opinion videos Letters Sport View all Sport Football Cricket Rugby union Tennis Cycling F1 Golf US sports Culture View all Culture Books Music TV & radio Art & design Film Games Classical Stage Lifestyle View all Lifestyle Fashion Food Recipes Love & sex Health & fitness Home & garden Women Men Family Travel Money Search input google-search Search Support us Print subscriptions Search jobs Holidays Digital Archive Guardian Licensing Live events About Us The Guardian app Video Podcasts Pictures Newsletters Today's paper Inside the Guardian Guardian Weekly Crosswords Wordiply Corrections Tips Search input google-search Search Search jobs Holidays Digital Archive Guardian Licensing Live events About Us Books Music TV & radio Art & design Film Games Classical Stage Animal skulls, like the one painted in O’Keeffe’s 1936 work Mule’s Skull with Pink Poinsettia, hung on the walls of Ghost Ranch. Photograph: Georgia O’Keeffe/© 2026 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / DACS Courtesy of Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Photo: Tim Nighswander/IMAGING4ART View image in fullscreen Animal skulls, like the one painted in O’Keeffe’s 1936 work Mule’s Skull with Pink Poinsettia, hung on the walls of Ghost Ranch. Photograph: Georgia O’Keeffe/© 2026 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / DACS Courtesy of Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Photo: Tim Nighswander/IMAGING4ART Georgia O'Keeffe Nearly 20 Georgia O’Keeffe works to go on display in UK for first time Ghost Ranch exhibition at Courtauld in London will look at how artist’s New Mexico home shaped her life and work Lanre Bakare Arts and culture correspondent Mon 27 Jul 2026 10.00 CEST Last modified on Mon 27 Jul 2026 11.11 CEST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google As soon as Georgia O’Keeffe was shown Ghost Ranch, she knew it was her place. The remote property in the shadow of the mountains north of Santa Fe in New Mexico would become the artist’s summer residence for decades – a setting that fascinated her, inspired several paintings and is where her ashes were scattered. “I knew the minute I got up here that this was where I would live,” she once said. Now, a new exhibition at the Courtauld will shed light on O’Keeffe’s home at Ghost Ranch and how it shaped her art and life. Almost two dozen works will make up the show, titled Georgia O’Keeffe: Ghost Ranch, which opens in October 2027, with most of them having never before been shown in the UK. View image in fullscreen Red and Yellow Cliffs, 1940, is one of a number of O’Keeffe’s works explicitly influenced by the land that surrounded Ghost Ranch. Photograph: Georgia O’Keeffe/© 2026 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / DACS Courtesy of Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Photo: Tim Nighswander/IMAGING4ART Dr Karen Serres, senior curator of paintings at the Courtauld Gallery, told the Guardian that few in the UK are aware of the role Ghost Ranch played in the development of one of the most important 20th-century American modernists. “Ghost Ranch was such an important part of her life, and it illuminates a large part of her art in general,” said Serres. “For example, in her flower paintings, where she goes really, really, really close up and says, ‘I want to do that because I want to make people look at things that are overlooked.’ She does the exact same thing for these landscapes.” O’Keeffe moved into the property, which was part of a sprawling 21,000 acre estate, in 1934, initially renting a room there before eventually purchasing it and making it her permanent home. “ As soon as I saw it, that was my country,” she once said. “I’d never seen anything like it before, but it fitted to me exactly.” Ghost Ranch was one of two properties O’Keeffe lived at in New Mexico. The other was a house in the village of Abiquiú, 16 miles south of the ranch, which is preserved and open to the public. Ghost Ranch is not open to the general public but was somewhere that O’Keeffe “ always felt more at home ”, according to the New Yorker’s Calvin Tomkins, who profiled her in 1974. “The solitude, the stillness and the harsh, dry, splendid landscape are more her world,” he wrote. “Animal skulls and bleached antlers hang on the walls of her patio, and rocks picked up on her walks and camping trips spill in profusion over low tables and shelves.” O’Keeffe added to the mystique around Ghost Ranch when she suggested in interviews that the home had been the scene of a murder before she bought it, and many of her most famous photoshoots – included with Cecil Beaton for Vogue – took place there. View image in fullscreen Gerald’s Tree I, 1937, is another piece that found O’Keeffe committing to canvas the unique landscape in which she lived. Photograph: Georgia O’Keeffe/© 2026 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / DACS Despite a significant international profile, O’Keeffe’s work has rarely been seen in the UK; Serres says only six out of the two dozen works on show at the Courtauld have been shown in Britain before. O’Keeffe’s reputation in the UK hasn’t always been so exalted. After her Hayward show in 1993, Britain’s male critics unleashed a torrent of dismissive reviews . She was called a “commercial illustrator”, “irredeemably amateur”, an artist who “made good monthly images on calendars” and “grossly overrated”. Two decades later, before her show at the Tate in 2016, one of the main narratives was that the show aimed to challenge the “ conservative male ” assumptions that her flower paintings were depictions of female genitalia. Serres said that the Ghost Ranch exhibition is another opportunity for the wider public to gain a deeper knowledge of an artist who is still often misunderstood or who has her work framed by the response of male critics. “She’s known as just this formidable female artist,” said Serres. “But actually seeing her work, understanding what she’s about, I don’t think we are there yet.” Explore more on these topics Georgia O'Keeffe The Courtauld Institute of Art Art news Share Reuse this content More on this story More on this story Completely nuts: Dutch gallery covers floor in peanut butter to honour late artist 10 Jul 2026 ‘We can all coexist’: artist Es Devlin uses selfies to unite UK in portrait of a nation 14 May 2026 German artist Georg Baselitz dies aged 88 30 Apr 2026 Back to the 90s: Tate exhibition to explore decade’s art and fashion 27 Apr 2026 Who was Hilma? Af Klint exhibition to highlight exclusion of women from abstract art 10 Apr 2026 Victorian time capsule: exhibition tells story of Brodsworth Hall in Yorkshire 27 Mar 2026 Artist, impresario, couturier: V&A to stage Schiaparelli retrospective 6 Mar 2026 ‘Radical and joyous’: Beryl Cook show aims to prove she was a serious artist 18 Jan 2026 Andean artist Antonio Paucar wins Artes Mundi prize in Wales 15 Jan 2026 Most viewed Most viewed Books Music TV & radio Art & design Film Games Classical Stage News Opinion Sport Culture Lifestyle Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning Sign up for our email About us Help Complaints & corrections Contact us Tip us off SecureDrop Privacy policy Cookie policy Tax strategy Terms & conditions All topics All writers Newsletters Digital newspaper archive Bluesky Facebook Instagram LinkedIn Threads TikTok YouTube Advertise with us Search UK jobs Tips Accessibility settings Work with us Back to top © 2026 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. (dcr)
Comments
No comments yet.
Sign in to comment.