Painted in the summer of 1965, when Georgia O\u2019Keeffe was 77 years old, this monumental work culminates a series inspired by the artist\u2019s experiences as an airplane passenger during the 1950s. Working in Abiquiu, New Mexico, O\u2019Keeffe began around 1963 to capture the endless expanses of clouds she had observed from airplane windows during trips all over the world. Beginning with a relatively realistic depiction of small white clouds on a three-by-four-foot canvas, she progressed to more stylized images of the motif on larger surfaces. O\u2019Keeffe wrote:<\/p>\n
"I painted a painting eight feet high and twenty-four feet wide\u2014it kept me working every minute from six a.m. till eight or nine at night as I had to be finished before it was cold\u2014I worked in the garage and it had no heat\u2014Such a size is of course ridiculous but I had it in my head as something I wanted to do for a couple of years."<\/p>\n
In 1970 Sky above Clouds IV<\/em> was scheduled to be included in a retrospective of O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s work at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the San Francisco Museum of Art. After being shown in New York and Chicago, the painting was determined to be too large to enter the doors of the museum in San Francisco. It thus remained on loan to the Art Institute for more than a decade, while the artist and public-minded collectors of her art arranged for it to join the museum\u2019s permanent collection.<\/p>\n The special relationship between O\u2019Keeffe and the Art Institute began in 1905, when she enrolled as a student at the School of the Art Institute. Her first museum retrospective was organized here in 1943. Later, as the executor for the estate of her husband, the pioneering American photographer and art dealer Alfred Stieglitz, O\u2019Keeffe presented the Art Institute with an important group of modernist works, including a number of her own, many of which are on view in the galleries of American art. She continued to make significant additions to this bequest until her death, at age 98, in 1986.<\/p>\n","short_description":"Painted in the summer of 1965, when Georgia O\u2019Keeffe was 77 years old, this monumental work is the final painting in a series the artist made based on her experiences as an airplane passenger. Because of its size and its status as an icon of the museum's collection, the work has not left the Art Institute since it came into the building in 1983.","dimensions":"243.8 \u00d7 731.5 cm (96 \u00d7 288 in.)","dimensions_detail":[{"depth":null,"width":731,"height":243,"diameter":null,"clarification":null}],"medium_display":"Oil on canvas","inscriptions":null,"credit_line":"Purchased with funds provided by the Paul and Gabriella Rosenbaum Foundation; gift of Georgia O'Keeffe","catalogue_display":" Lynes 1999 1498<\/p>","publication_history":"Henry Seldis, \"Georgia O'Keeffe at 78: Tough-Minded Romantic,\" Los Angeles Times<\/em>, Jan. 22, 1967, A14.\n\nBarbara Buhler Lynes, Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonn\u00e9<\/em>, vol. 2 (National Gallery of Art; Abiquiu, NM: Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), no. 1498.\n\nHunter Drohojowska-Philp, Full Bloom: The Art and Life of Georgia O'Keeffe<\/em> (W. W. Norton & Company, 2004), 492\u20133, 505.\n\nRen\u00e9 Paul Barilleaux and Sarah Whitaker Peters, eds., Georgia O'Keeffe: Color and Conservation<\/em>, exh. cat. (Jackson, MS, and State College, PA: Mississippi Museum of Art and Penn State University Press, 2006), 100.\n\nSarah Rovang, \"How John Deere and Eero Saarinen Inspired Georgia O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s Largest Painting,\" Hyperallergic<\/em>, last modified April 2, 2020, ttps:\/\/hyperallergic.com\/548956\/how-john-deere-and-eero-saarinen-inspired-georgia-okeeffes-largest-painting<\/a>, (ill.).\n\nPhilip Kennicott and Matthew Cappucci, \"Examining the Elements of Breathtaking Art: Weather patterns can help us understand what\u2019s going on in these classic images,\" The Washington Post<\/em>, last modified July 16, 2021, https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/arts-entertainment\/interactive\/2021\/weather-patterns-in-art<\/a>, (ill.).","exhibition_history":"Fort Worth, Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Georgia O'Keeffe<\/em>, Mar. 17\u2013May 8, 1966, as Above the Clouds IV<\/em>, no cat. no.\n\nMuseum of Fine Arts, Houston, Georgia O'Keeffe Exhibition<\/em>, May 28\u2013July 3, 1966, as Above the Clouds IV<\/em>.\n\nLos Angeles, Rolf Nelson Gallery, late 1966\u2013early 1967, no cat.\n\nWhitney Museum of American Art, Georgia O'Keeffe Retrospective Exhibition<\/em>, Oct. 8\u2013Nov. 29, 1970; the Art Institute of Chicago, Jan. 6\u2013Feb. 7, 1971; San Francisco Museum of Art, Mar. 15\u2013Apr. 30, 1971, cover (ill.), cat. 120 (New York and Chicago only).\n\nWashington, DC, National Gallery of Art, Georgia O'Keeffe: Art and Letters<\/em>, Nov. 1, 1987\u2013Feb. 21, 1988; the Art Institute of Chicago, Mar. 5\u2013June 19, 1988; Dallas Museum of Art, July 31\u2013Oct. 16, 1988; Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nov. 19, 1988\u2013Feb. 5, 1989, cat. 120 (Washington, DC and Chicago only).","provenance_text":"Georgia O\u2019Keeffe (1887\u20131986), Abiqui\u00fa, NM [on loan to the Art Institute of Chicago from 1971]; partially sold and partially given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1983.","edition":null,"publishing_verification_level":"Web Cataloged","internal_department_id":21,"fiscal_year":1984,"fiscal_year_deaccession":null,"is_public_domain":false,"is_zoomable":true,"max_zoom_window_size":1280,"copyright_notice":"\u00a9 The Art Institute of Chicago","has_multimedia_resources":false,"has_educational_resources":true,"has_advanced_imaging":false,"colorfulness":0,"color":{"h":204,"l":35,"s":87,"percentage":1.5449597830261353e-5,"population":43},"latitude":41.879587433352,"longitude":-87.622325253794,"latlon":"41.879587433352,-87.622325253794","is_on_view":true,"on_loan_display":null,"gallery_title":"Gallery 249","gallery_id":2147479697,"nomisma_id":null,"artwork_type_title":"Painting","artwork_type_id":1,"department_title":"Arts of the Americas","department_id":"PC-3","artist_id":36062,"artist_title":"Georgia O'Keeffe","alt_artist_ids":[],"artist_ids":[36062],"artist_titles":["Georgia O'Keeffe"],"category_ids":["PC-825","PC-831","PC-154","PC-827","PC-3"],"category_titles":["Women artists","Essentials","Chicago Artists","SAIC Alumni and Faculty","Arts of the Americas"],"term_titles":["oil paint (paint)","painting","Modernism","oil painting","landscapes","canvas","modern and contemporary art","painting (image making)","Chicago"],"style_id":"TM-5981","style_title":"Modernism","alt_style_ids":[],"style_ids":["TM-5981"],"style_titles":["Modernism"],"classification_id":"TM-9","classification_title":"painting","alt_classification_ids":["TM-155"],"classification_ids":["TM-9","TM-155"],"classification_titles":["painting","modern and contemporary art"],"subject_id":"TM-8657","alt_subject_ids":["TM-12075"],"subject_ids":["TM-8657","TM-12075"],"subject_titles":["landscapes","Chicago"],"material_id":"TM-2451","alt_material_ids":["TM-3124"],"material_ids":["TM-2451","TM-3124"],"material_titles":["oil paint (paint)","canvas"],"technique_id":"TM-4273","alt_technique_ids":["TM-3891"],"technique_ids":["TM-4273","TM-3891"],"technique_titles":["oil painting","painting (image making)"],"theme_titles":["Women artists","Essentials","Chicago Artists","SAIC Alumni and Faculty"],"image_id":"ace9f8d4-eac7-e5f7-50b2-6a77f7029c9b","alt_image_ids":[],"document_ids":["92a80080-7a67-c6aa-5fd8-1a294240f49c"],"sound_ids":[],"video_ids":[],"text_ids":["92a80080-7a67-c6aa-5fd8-1a294240f49c"],"section_ids":[],"section_titles":[],"site_ids":[],"suggest_autocomplete_boosted":"Sky above Clouds IV","suggest_autocomplete_all":[{"input":["1983.821"],"contexts":{"groupings":["accession"]}},{"input":["Sky above Clouds IV"],"weight":93549,"contexts":{"groupings":["title"]}}],"source_updated_at":"2025-10-06T13:54:46-05:00","updated_at":"2026-07-26T23:27:13-05:00","timestamp":"2026-08-01T21:29:25-05:00"},"info":{"license_text":"The `description` field in this response is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Generic License (CC-By) and the Terms and Conditions of artic.edu. All other data in this response is licensed under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) 1.0 designation and the Terms and Conditions of artic.edu.","license_links":["https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/publicdomain\/zero\/1.0\/","https:\/\/www.artic.edu\/terms"],"version":"1.14"},"config":{"iiif_url":"https:\/\/www.artic.edu\/iiif\/2","website_url":"http:\/\/www.artic.edu"}}