| Oriental Poppies | |
| Artist: | Georgia O'Keeffe |
| Year: | 1927 |
| Medium: | Oil on canvas |
| Height Metric: | 101.6 |
| Width Metric: | 76.2 |
| Metric Unit: | cm |
| Imperial Unit: | in |
| Museum: | Weisman Art Museum |
| City: | Minneapolis |
Oriental Poppies, also called Red Poppies, is a 1927 oil-on-canvas painting by Georgia O'Keeffe.[1] It is a close-up of two Papaver orientale flowers that fill the entire canvas.
The Arts Desk describes it as more subtle but equally powerful as Calla Lilies on Red, "Peering into the bright-orange petals, O’Keeffe reveals the velvety dark interior. The drama of this provocative image stems from the juxtaposition of vivid color and intrusive close-up."[2] Of the large close-up, O'Keeffe said that she decided that she would paint flowers "big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it - I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers."[3] Making close-ups of flowers is said to have been influenced by her husband Alfred Stieglitz, a photographer, after they began a more sexual relationship.
Along with Black Iris, Liese Spencer of The Guardian calls it one of "her lush, sensual paintings of flowers."[4] It fills the nearly four foot wide canvas, without a background, so that the flowers "explode" on the canvas, and direct the eye to the center of the flowers. It is among her most famous works of art.[5]
The painting is owned by the Weisman Art Museum of the University of Minnesota, where it was the most valuable painting in their collection.[6] Prior to its acquisition in 1937, it was exhibited by Stieglitz at his gallery, An American Place, in New York City.[7] [8]
In 2016, Tate Modern in London exhibited Oriental Poppies along with more than 100 of O'Keeffe's major works of art, made over six decades.[9] The exhibition was also held at the Bank Austria Kunstforum in Vienna that year.[10]