Rarely-Seen Photos of Georgia O'Keeffe's New Mexico Home Have Just Surfaced
Georgia O'Keeffe's former Santa Fe home—where the artist lived from 1984 until her death in 1986—recently hit the market for $15 million. In light of this, we searched our archives to revisit one of her other homes: an abode in Abiquiu, New Mexico, designed for simple living. House Beautiful originally featured the home in the April 1963 issue. The photos reveal how the artist embraced only the items that meant the most to her, while surrounded by a landscape that inspired some of her famous work. Explore the original piece below.
The austerity of the desert pervades her home and her work
By Laura Gilpin
Beauty of spacing and simplicity of design are the two major qualities that dominate the painting of Georgia O’Keeffe. They are also the dominant characteristics of her house in Abiquiu, New Mexico. Indeed, her house and her painting are all of a piece, and most of her “decorations” are nature objects picked up off the desert.
The people in this area have made a strong fatalistic blending of the Spanish Catholic religion and the ancient Indian religion. They never are niches added, and of course, the surfaces both indoors and out have been recoated.
The entrance is through a wide gate into a large patio. On the right is one building containing a very large studio and a bedroom. Through large windows, these rooms overlook the cottonwood-tree-studded valley and the river flowing to the Rio Grande. The distant valley can be seen at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, a view which has inspired many a painting.
To the left of the entrance gate is a guest room and a zaguan, a covered passageway between adobe walls, leading to a smaller, completely surrounded patio. Through an original door, there is another entrance from the outside. Other doors open into the living and dining rooms and the working part of the house, while another zaguan leads to a spacious adobe-walled garden.
Simplicity of arrangement, as well as the simplicity of her life, is the essence f the house. An avid gardener, she raises much of her own food supply—fruit of all sorts, vegetables, herbs. A large freezer keeps her well supplied throughout the year.
The dining room is small, with adobe-colored walls and an Indian-type fireplace that burns upright logs.
Opposite the patio door of the dining room is a large window looking into the “roofless” room. This was once a storeroom with a caved-in roof. During the remodeling, Miss O’Keeffe noticed the play of light and shadow from the few remaining roof beams. So with gravel in place of a floor, white walls, two small evergreen trees and an old stump, she produced an everchanging still-life-in-fdepth to watch from the dining table.
The floors of both the dining room and living room are adobe, soft to walk on and as easily responsive to the vacuum cleaner as any other floor material. The long, cool white walls of the living room are partially lighted by three overhead skylights. White unbleached muslin curtains cover bookcases and the patio door. There is a built-in banco and a wall fireplace at one end of the room, a window looking into the garden at the other. Two long tables, wide shelves in reality, are set into the walls.
Aside from one or two of her own paintings and an African mask, her decorative objects are chiefly nature’s own—bits of weathered wood, beautiful stones, shells, bones, the simplest elements of life. The impression of the house is one of quiet contemplation—not that conversion cannot be extremely lively when guests arrive. Wonderful books, the finest of recordings, two superb blue chow dogs are Misss O’Keeffe’s daily companions at home, while out-of-doors is all the magnificent landscape of New Mexico.
Most of life’s petty frustrations are eliminated from Miss O’Keeffe’s existence. She has reduced her life to fundamental essentials and those things that mean the most to her. The very objects with which she surrounds herself take on an added beauty by the way she arranges and places them. Such is the home, the life, the work of Georgia O’Keeffe, one of America’s great painters.
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