Cebolla Church (work of art)
Artwork Info
About
Driving through the New Mexican highlands, Georgia O’Keeffe would often pass through the village of Cebolla. The artist was moved to depict the rustic by adobe Church of Santo Niño and wrote the following about this painting:
“The county that I live in is one of the poorest in the United States. About thirty miles north of where I live in is a small village with sharply pitched, rusted tin roofs. This village called Cebola has more snow in winter than the lower areas and does not have the typical flat roof adobes. I had often passed the church so typical of the difficult life of the people. After I had been in Canada painting the wide white barns of the area along the Saint Lawrence river, I thought how different the life of the Canadian farmers was from life in Cebolla. So the next summer I painted the Cebolla Church….”
Examine how Georgia O’Keeffe’s Cebolla Church places the building in the composition: cropping it rather than centering it in a larger landscape. When she painted the church, O’Keeffe emphasized its isolation and stark simplicity. Perhaps the most intriguing question about this painting: “What is that thing in the window?”
tags: southwest, architecture
Images
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Cebolla Church