Cubism and Abstraction

Explore the works discussed in the video below. Click the thumbnails to expand.

The Cubism and Abstraction style began when John Marin interpreted the New Mexico landscape in an angular, agitated style that seems worlds away from the stately western panoramas of Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran. The fact that Moran died in 1926, just three years before Marin made his first trip to New Mexico, is a reminder of the speed with which stylistic movements, as well as change in general, arrived in the American West.

The best-known icons of the Southwest are the landscapes of Georgia O’Keeffe. O’Keeffe spent much of her early career in New York and in Texas, where she worked as an educator. However, she found her deepest comfort and inspiration in the red hills of New Mexico, which she made her permanent home in 1949.