Georgia O’Keeffe was born in Wisconsin in 1887.
Her birthplace was Sun Prairie, a community near Madison. She grew up in a large family on a farm, and her early surroundings were very different from the New York galleries and New Mexico deserts later linked with her name. The practical discipline of rural life formed part of her early background, although her artistic interests led her away from farming.
O’Keeffe studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York. She later taught in several places, including Texas and South Carolina, before her career became centered in New York and New Mexico.
Wisconsin is sometimes overlooked because O’Keeffe is so strongly associated with the Southwest. Nevertheless, her biography begins there, and the state is a distinct fact from the New Mexico landscape that inspired her later paintings. Her Wisconsin origin also helps explain why accounts of her life span several very different American regions.