Lost Georgia O’Keeffe painting found in an East Village apartment heads to auction
“Near Abiquiu, New Mexico I” by Georgia O’Keeffe. Courtesy of Christie’s New York
A lost Georgia O’Keeffe painting recently rediscovered in an East Village apartment will go to auction this month. An early work of the American modernist painter, “Near Abiquiu, New Mexico I” is the first iteration in a series of three works by O’Keeffe depicting Lobo Peak in New Mexico. The painting was found at the home of an elderly woman, who told her niece to look for the artwork in a closet, where it sat for decades, as the New York Post first reported. Christie’s New York will offer the painting as part of a larger sale on November 17; it’s estimated to fetch up to $3 million. Before the sale, the public can view the painting for the first time in decades in a free exhibition at Rockefeller Center that runs from November 7 to November 17.
O’Keeffe painted “Near Abiquiu, New Mexico I” in 1930, about a year after her first visit to New Mexico. The state’s expansive skies and rolling hills became the artist’s most beloved and recognized subjects, as Christie’s noted. The first version of the painting is a “distinctly modern vision” of O’Keeffe’s favorite place, with “undulating lines of earth tones and rich impasto” that put the viewer “in direct communication with the landscape.”
In a letter to her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, O’Keeffe wrote about the scene: “This is the Lobo Mountain…I want to paint this mountain—wanted to every year—but it is quite impossible.”
The painting’s owner, whose family requested anonymity, was gifted the artwork as a graduation present. Her mother had purchased the painting for $3,800 on April 15, 1963, at the Downtown Gallery on 51st Street, directly from O’Keeffe’s dealer in Manhattan.
The woman, who has since passed away, is described by her family as “worldly” and “ultra-intelligent.” She traveled widely as part of the Foreign Service and was fluent in at least four languages.
She had hung the artwork in her East Village home until the mid-1980s, when reportedly she got nervous that a guest “was eyeing it a bit too closely.”
After that, she placed the painting in its original box and stored it in the closet, where it sat until she told her niece: “Oh, by the way, there’s a Georgia O’Keeffe in the closet.”
According to Christie’s, the painting only appears in an appendix of O’Keeffe’s catalogue raisonné; its existence was known only through a photo of the work taken in 1931.
“This is a wonderful painting, a remarkable story, and an extraordinary opportunity for collectors and the general public alike,” Tylee Abbott, senior specialist and head of American Art at Christie’s, said.
“Rediscoveries are rare in the well-established market for academically researched and highly revered historic American artists. To uncover a seminal work, representative of this 20th-century master’s deep personal engagement with the landscape, a pillar of her career, which is exquisitely rendered and well preserved, is a once-in-a-lifetime moment, and absolutely thrilling.”
The painting will be on display at Christie’s New York at 20 Rockefeller Plaza from November 7 to November 17. The work will be presented as part of Christie’s 20th Century Evening Sale on November 17, which will include many masterpieces of modern art, including works by Gustav Klimt and Wassily Kandinsky.
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