Pale Sun

Charles Demuth once said about O'Keeffe's paintings, "Each color almost regains the fun it must have felt within itself upon forming the first rainbow."

In January 1916, when O'Keeffe was an unknown art teacher living in South Carolina, a friend of the young artist brought a group of her abstract drawings to the influential editor, photographer, and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz. Later that year, without O'Keeffe’s knowledge, Stieglitz decided to exhibit the drawings at his New York gallery 291, promoting both their homegrown abstraction and their maker's gender: “291 had never before seen a woman express herself so frankly on paper.” When O'Keeffe found out, she was furious and demanded they be taken down, but Stieglitz refused. The exhibition launched her career.