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©
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, VEGAP, Madrid
Georgia O'Keeffe

Shell and Old Shingle V

1926
Oil on canvas.
76.2 x 46 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
698
(
1980.10
)
ROOM 46
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room

In the early 1920s Georgia O’Keeffe produced isolated images of simple shapes found in nature such as shells, bones and flowers, in reaction to the excessive intellectualisation and insularity to which painting was being subjected at the time. Shell and Old Shingle V, executed in 1926, belongs to a set of small compositions devoted to these two natural objects. The painter herself described the chance circumstances that led her to create these paintings: “We were shingling the barn and the old shingles, taken off, were free to fly around. Absentmindedly I picked up a loose one and carried it into the house and up to the table in my room. On the table was a white clam shell brought from Maine in the spring. I had been painting it and it still lay there. The white shape of the shell and the grey shape of the weathered shingle were beautiful against the pale grey leaf on the faintly pink-lined pattern of the wallpaper. Adding the shingle got me painting again.”

O’Keeffe began the series with a fairly realistic rendering of the shingle and shell, and added two leaves to the first and third versions. The second and the sixth are fairly similar and the fourth version is perhaps the most abstract as it presents a more close up view. The fifth, belonging to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, is similar to the sixth “but less abstract” according to the annotations found in the painter’s archives. In all of these compositions, O’Keeffe shows her constant concern with attempting to reconcile the tensions between realism and abstraction; indeed, the progression of the series was intended precisely to render natural forms in an increasingly abstract manner.

Oscar Bluemner, a painter of German origin, expressed his admiration for O’Keeffe in his introduction to the catalogue of her solo exhibition in 1927 at The Intimate Gallery recently opened in New York by her husband Alfred Stieglitz, in which the present painting was shown. The delicate facture and the exquisite luminosity of the composition, which appear to lend grandeur to these humble objects, no doubt contributed to her success.

Paloma Alarcó

20th Centurys. XX - Primeras vanguardias norteamericanasPaintingOilcanvas
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Max Beckmann, figuras del exílio. Exhibition catalogue. Hardcover. Spanish.

Max Beckmann, figuras del exílio. Exhibition catalogue. Hardcover. Spanish.

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Poster Richard Estes. Telephone Booths, 1967

Poster Richard Estes. Telephone Booths, 1967

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De Palacio Villahermosa a Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Historia de un edificio

De Palacio Villahermosa a Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Historia de un edificio

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Poster Richard Estes. Nedick's, 1970

Poster Richard Estes. Nedick's, 1970

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Shell and Old Shingle V. Concha y viejo tablón de madera V, 1926
Shell and Old Shingle V
Georgia O'Keeffe

©

Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, VEGAP, Madrid

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Shell and Old Shingle V. Concha y viejo tablón de madera V, 1926
Shell and Old Shingle V
Georgia O'Keeffe

©

Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, VEGAP, Madrid

Terms of Use

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