Illumination: The Paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe, Agnes Pelton, Agnes Martin, and Florence Miller Pierce

Illumination: The Paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe, Agnes Pelton, Agnes Martin, and Florence Miller Pierce

May 3, 2009 – September 9, 2009

Illumination: The Paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe, Agnes Pelton, Agnes Martin, and Florence Miller Pierce is the first exhibition to bring together the work of these four important American modernist painters and features nearly 100 works drawn from important public and private collections.

All four women made indelible marks on modernist art of the 20th century—O’Keeffe and Pelton created distinctive images using lush, organic forms, while Martin and Pierce produced signature geometric works of sublime simplicity. They each developed vocabularies with varying degrees of abstraction and shared an interest in illumination and a desire to convey transcendence and spirituality in their paintings.

This exhibition was organized by the Orange County Museum of Art and curated by Karen Moss.

 

Illumination: The Paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe, Agnes Pelton, Agnes Martin, and Florence Miller Pierce (installation view), 2009; Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA. Photo: Colin Young-Wolff.
Agnes Pelton, The Guide, 1929; oil on canvas; 30-1/2 x 20-1/4 inches; Museum purchase with funds provided through prior gift of Lois Outerbridge, LAM.1998.002.