Past exhibitions

The trailblazing American artist together with Australia’s visionary painters

Discover how Georgia O’Keeffe, Margaret Preston and Grace Cossington Smith championed a new way of picturing the world during the transformative decades of the early 20th century. Rejecting artistic conventions of the past, these three artists became trailblazers of a shared modernist vision that embraced vivid colour, light, vitality and optimism.

Bringing together approximately 30 paintings by each artist, including the largest survey of O’Keeffe’s work to visit Australia, the exhibition presents fresh perspectives on these three extraordinary artists and the globe-crossing currents of modern art in the making.

O’Keeffe, Preston, Cossington Smith: making modernism is presented by the Heide Museum of Modern Art and the Art Gallery of NSW in partnership with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe and the Queensland Art Gallery.

‘Each woman’s distinct vision is striking’

- The Monthly

‘A confidence and optimism infuses the work of the three artists’

– Art + Australia

Note: This display includes works that are protected under the Protection of Cultural Objects on Loan Act 2013. More information

Images left to right: Georgia O’Keeffe Ram’s Head, Blue Morning Glory 1938, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, gift of The Burnett Foundation © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum; Margaret Preston Western Australian gum blossom 1928, Art Gallery of New South Wales, purchased 1978 © Margaret Rose Preston Estate, licensed by Viscopy, Sydney; Grace Cossington Smith The bridge in building 1929, National Gallery of Australia, gift of Ellen Waugh 2005 © Estate of Grace Cossington Smith