Line and Curve

Pale curved shapes stack and overlap across the canvas, their rounded edges folding into one another to form vertical bands broken by faint passages of shadow. The surface reads almost like fabric or smoke, gray tones shifting gently beneath white, giving the composition a quiet sense of depth without any fixed subject. Georgia O'Keeffe painted this oil work titled Line and Curve in 1927; it is held at the National Gallery of Art, having come to the museum through the Alfred Stieglitz Collection as part of a bequest from the artist herself. O'Keeffe, born in 1887 and died in 1986, was an American painter whose abstraction drew close attention to natural form. Looking closely, the shadows between the curves create a rhythm that pulls the eye upward through the overlapping shapes.