Juan Hamilton, an artist, caretaker and protégé of the renowned painter Georgia O’Keeffe, died on February 20 in Santa Fe, New Mexico at the age of 79.
According to his wife, Anna Marie Hamilton, he died of complications associated with subdural hematoma.
Born on December 22, 1945 in John Bruce Hamilton, of Dallas, Texas, he grew up in Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela was the child of parents Alan and Hamilton, Kitzmiller, who was a Presbyterian missionary. During this time, he adopted Juan’s name and began to learn how to work with local potters with clay.
Related Articles
Hamilton lived between Manhattan’s Upper West Side and Glen Rock, New Jersey, and received a bachelor’s degree in studio art from Hastings College in Nebraska, and later studied sculpture at Claremont Graduate School in California.
At 27, Hamilton was a divorced pottery and handyman on the sprawling ghost ranch property owned by Presbyterian Church, where O’Keeffe, 85, lives. After knocking on the door and asking for odd jobs, she asked him to pack a transport box, thus starting a scandalous relationship that lasted for ten years.
Although the nature of their relationship with each other is debated and ultimately unclear, e.g. New York TimesHamilton cared for aging artists in the last few years. In exchange for his dedication, he received her $90 million legacy ($40 million in O’Keeffe’s artwork, which was about $50 million in the time) and was responsible for overseeing her legacy.
Of course, proximity to O’Keeffe also stimulated Hamilton’s artistic career as a sculptor, with performances in New York in 1978 including attendance by Andy Warhol and Joni Mitchell, as well as positive reviews from art critics Grace Grace Glueck and John Russell. However, this infamous level gradually faded away.
In 1980, Hamilton married Anna Marie (Prohoroff) Erskine, who also went to Ghost Ranch. They have two sons, Albert and Brandon. The family moved to O’Keeffe’s home in Santa Fe, where the artist’s health had been dead at the age of 98 in 1986.
“It was Hamilton, not a relative, who took care of O’Keeffe for her last few years, who also gave her the joy and purpose of life.” Washington Post Reported the relationship in 1987.
Eventually, Hamilton agreed to restore to an earlier version of the O’Keeffe Will, granting the family millions of dollars and providing him with more than twenty works of art and most of her property. The O’Keeffe Foundation of Georgia was established to manage the affairs of the estate.
Although Hamilton insisted that he inherited decades of art and Ephemera from O’Keeffe, he ended up selling over 100 items from his collection through Sotheby’s, netting $17.2 million in 2020.
