Painted in 1945, “My Backyard” is part of an iconic series of works that depict the red and yellow cliffs near O’Keeffe’s home in Abiquiú, near Ghost Ranch, in New Mexico.
Here she rendered the spectacular environment of her home with a softness and sensuality that causes it to slip between landscape and dreamlike abstraction. We found this same softness at the core of the Spring Collection from Marsèll.
In My Backyard, O’Keeffe translates this landscape into the language of art…“Always her desert poetry is embodied in robust physical language, speaking to her senses.”
Suffused with a crystalline quality of light, O’Keeffe’s depiction of her backyard cliffs perfectly captures the rugged architectural forms and brilliant colors she found there. Marsèll too found a different voice this season. Despite their strong willed, boundary-breaking ethos, the warm, earthy tones and luxe textures speak of sensorial lightness and fluid memories — the sun’s rays through the clouds.
Source: Georgia O’Keeffe Retrospective Exhibition, New York, 1970, p. 22.
