WEST PALM BEACH, FL.- Organized by the Norton Museum of Art, Georgia O'Keeffe: Circling Around Abstraction is the first exhibition to highlight this renowned American painter's individual approach to the issue of abstraction, a stylistic strategy which in many ways preoccupied artists throughout the 20th century. The exhibition brings together fifty-one of O'Keeffe's works to illuminate the various and evolving ways she used circular forms and motifs as the means whereby she organized, simplified, and even energized her compositions. Both the exhibition and its catalogue, with every work illustrated in color, will enhance both popular appreciation and scholarly understanding of the artist's significant contribution to the development of American modernism. After its debut in West Palm Beach, Georgia O'Keeffe: Circling Around Abstraction will travel to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe (May 25 - September 9, 2007) and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (October 7 - January 6, 2008).

As the title suggests, O’Keeffe approached the issue of abstraction—a seminal concern in American art throughout her long career—from different angles. “Georgia O’Keeffe’s works range from clear, objective depictions of motifs to others that are more subjective. In all of her works O’Keeffe endeavored to simplify her compositions, eliminate non-essential details, and distill the essence of the things she was painting” said Norton Museum Executive Director, Christina Orr-Cahall.

The title also refers to the specific genre of forms that O’Keeffe drew and to which she returned repeatedly over the entire course of her career: the circle, the oval, and the hypnotic swirl of a whiplash spiral. Such forms can be found in her earliest charcoal abstractions of the 1910s and in many of her innovative oil paintings that followed, such as the Norton Museum’s Red Flower. In the 1920s, working in the more traditional genre of still life, O’Keeffe focused on the rounded forms of fruits and vegetables set within or upon baskets and plates and presented in severely cropped and flattened compositions. She also expanded her range of subjects drawn from the natural world while continuing to explore new ways of depicting them. Circling Around Abstraction features a variety of these paintings, many never before exhibited together, such as the group of three works wherein O’Keeffe magnified the hypnotic whirls of a piece of wood. In other paintings from these years she focused on the swirling forms of a clamshell, hidden pools nestled in the woods, and looping strands of fishing line as well as her signature flower blossoms.

Circling Around Abstraction finds O’Keeffe coming full circle as she revisits some of her favorite forms from earlier paintings, ranging from the charcoal abstractions of the teens to the more recent series of pelvis bones, produced in the final decades of her life. The exhibition will present a comprehensive overview of her haunting series of pelvis paintings, including the Norton Museum’s Pelvis with the Moon – New Mexico. Also on view will be one of O’Keeffe’s rare abstractions based on her experience of flying in an airplane, as well as two versions of one of her little-known abstract sculptures.

“Not only is Circling Around Abstraction the Norton Museum’s first O’Keeffe exhibition and the most comprehensive ever on view in Florida, it is the first to highlight her most important contribution to the development of abstract art in America -- the use of circular, naturally-derived forms rather than rectilinear geometric ones - therefore demonstrating why she is considered one of America's most innovative modern artists” said Jonathan Stuhlman, curator of the exhibition.

Georgia O’Keeffe: Circling Around Abstraction was organized by the Norton Museum of Art. National sponsorship of the exhibition has been generously provided by Mrs. Shelby Cullom Davis. Local sponsorship of this exhibition is made possible in part through the generosity of Mrs. Shelby Cullom Davis, Harold and Anne Berkley Smith, and The Priscilla and John Richman Endowment. Media Support provided by The Palm Beach Post, Palm Beach Daily News, NewsChannel 5 and WXEL 90.7 FM

Exhibition Catalogue: Georgia O’Keeffe: Circling Around Abstraction is accompanied by a fully illustrated hardcover catalog with essays by Jonathan Stuhlman, Curator of American Art to the Mint Museum of Art, and Barbara Buhler Lynes, the Emily Fisher Landau Director of the Research Center and Curator of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. Lynes is a scholar of American Modernism and the leading expert on O'Keeffe. The catalog is co-published by the Norton Museum of Art and Hudson Hills Press; it will be available for purchase in the Museum Store for $35.