Georgia & Anita

The Lifelong Friendship of Georgia O’Keeffe and Anita Pollitzer

by Liza Bennett

Georgia O’Keeffe knew as soon as she met Anita Pollitzer in 1914 that they had nothing in common. Anita looked like a china doll, small-boned and delicate, and obviously well-to-do in her fashionable tunics and hobble skirts. She had the kind of mouth that settled naturally into a smile, which irritated O’Keeffe, who had no time for dewy-eyed girls. Yet this first impression was the beginning of a lifelong friendship that had a tremendous impact on both women and on twentieth-century America.

Georgia & Anita tells the little-known story of their enduring friendship and its ultimately tragic arc. It was Pollitzer who first showed O’Keeffe’s work to family friend and mentor Alfred Stieglitz, the world-famous photographer whose 291 gallery in New York City was the epicenter of the modern art world. While O’Keeffe, Stieglitz, and their circle of friends were at the forefront of American modernism, Pollitzer became a leader of the National Woman’s Party and was instrumental in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote. Based on extensive research, including their fifty-year correspondence, Georgia and Anita casts light on the friendship of these two women who, in different ways, helped to modernize the world and women’s roles in it.

“By turns funny, inspiring, and poignant, this is the true story of two American women—one famous, one little known today—who changed the world. A narrative of friendship, devotion, and, ultimately, betrayal.”

—Kevin Baker, author of Dreamland

“An important contribution to the literature on women’s friendship. . . . Riveting.”

—Ellen Feldman, author of Lucy and Terrible Virtue

“An exquisitely told story of love, art, feminism, family, and the making of the modern age, propelled by the deep and turbulent current of a decades-long friendship between two extraordinary women.”

—Frederick E. Allen, former editor at American Heritage and New York magazines

“Liza Bennett’s luminous and absorbing exploration of the friendship between a painter of genius and a women’s rights activist during the morning years of the twentieth century rings absolutely true to its era while beautifully evoking the power and urgency of a new kind of American art being born.”

—Richard Snow, author of Disney’s Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World