SANTA FE, NM.- A selection of rarely seen watercolors, painted by Georgia O’Keeffe during the years she lived in Canyon, Texas (1916-1918), are on view at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum beginning April 29 through October 30, 2016.

These early watercolors, painted by O’Keeffe while she was teaching art at West Texas State Normal College (now West Texas A & M University), reveal a period of radical innovation and the defining moment in the artist’s commitment to abstraction as well as a career as a professional artist.

While living and working in Texas O’Keeffe created 51 watercolors including landscapes, abstractions, and nudes (studies of her own body). Many of the watercolors and drawings she created during her years in Texas were first shown by Alfred Stieglitz at his New York gallery “291” in 1917, bringing her early public and critical acclaim. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum holds the majority of the art she created during this period; a large portion are gifts from The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation and The Burnett Foundation.

Twenty-eight works are on view, including loans from the Amarillo Museum of Art, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum and Yale University Art Gallery.

“We are thrilled to be able to bring this important body of work together in our galleries for study and comparison. This is the largest group of these delicate works ever shown. Given their fragility and rarity, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity,” said curator Carolyn Kastner.

A catalogue published by Radius Books (radiusbooks.org) accompanies the installation of O’Keeffe’s Texas watercolor paintings 1916-1918. Most of the forty-six works created by O’Keeffe are approximately 8 x 12 inches, and the publication reproduces the watercolors at full size on a page. The color plates gathered in the catalogue, for the first time, allow critical comparison, and serve as a lasting reference and testament to the significance of the watercolors in O’Keeffe’s creative growth early in her career. An essay by art historian Amy Von Lintel accompanies the images.