Monet, O’Keeffe, and More: Inside the Inspiring Homes of 10 Legendary Artists Inline
Photo: Herb Lotz / Courtesy of The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum1/10Georgia O’Keeffe’s Abiquiu Home and Studio
The prolific painter purchased this home just outside of Santa Fe, in 1945. It was O’Keeffe’s sanctuary and a place she very rarely left in her later years. The house is a typical New Mexico adobe-style building, with a large garden outside. Inside, it’s decorated with starkly minimal furniture and artwork that ranges from a Calder mobile to Pueblo Indian pottery.
Photo: Courtesy of Museo Frida Kahlo2/10Museo Frida Kahlo
Also known as La Casa Azul, this was the house that Kahlo was born and raised in. Located in Mexico City’s Coyoacán borough, the rooms have been kept relatively the same over the years, dotted not only with Kahlo’s and Diego Rivera’s own work, but their personal letters, notes, photographs, and memorabilia. In the two rooms upstairs, you can stand among the original furniture from Kahlo’s bedroom and studio area.
Photo: Courtesy of The Judd Foundation3/10Judd Foundation
For a man who loathed being called a minimalist, Donald Judd surrounded himself with only the essentials—a mattress covered in plain white sheets on the floor, basic wooden tables and chairs, and bare
lightbulbs in the ceilings. His bright, open-space, five-story loft building in New York City’s Soho neighborhood houses a great deal of his work and has been open to the public only since 2013. Many also consider the Judd house to be the birthplace of the permanent art installation.
Photo: Getty Images4/10Pollock Krasner House and Study Center
In East Hampton, you can take a tour of the small 19th-century fisherman’s home and studio that once belonged to the painters Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. The rooms have gone mostly untouched since Krasner’s death in 1984, with items like Pollock’s jazz record collectsion and his personal library still in their original places. On the same property inside the barn studio, which never had any heat or light, the floors are covered with Pollock’s signature paint splatters.
Photo: Carlos Alejandro / Courtesy of The N.C. Wyeth House & Studio5/10The N.C. Wyeth House and Studio
Wyeth was famous for the illustrations he created for such classic novels as The Last of the Mohicans in 1919 and Treasure Island in 1911; the proceeds of the latter even helped pay for his home that still stands today in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. The inside of the main house and the studio remains as it did while he lived there, with farmhouse interiors in dark wood and a workspace highlighted by props like a canoe hanging from the ceiling.
Photo: Courtesy of Fondation Monet6/10Claude Monet House and Gardens at Giverny
After World War II, much of Monet’s house and gardens just outside of Paris were ruined, but thanks to a 10-year restoration in the late ’70s, the property was returned to its former glory. Today visitors can walk the exact gardens the French Impressionist once did and also take a look inside his all-yellow dining room and blue sitting room.
Photo: Getty Images7/10Château du Clos Lucé
This spectacular Renaissance-style château was home to Leonardo da Vinci from 1516 to 1519, the last years of his life. All of the frescos inside have been restored, and there are several machines designed by Da Vinci on display. The house and museum also feature an original copy of the Mona Lisa.
Photo: Getty Images8/10Portlligat Museum-House
Built in the 1930s, this winding, labyrinthine house is made up of a few small fisherman’s houses, located on the water in Cadaqués, Spain. The Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí lived in the house from 1930 to 1982, and it acted as both his summer retreat and studio. There are eccentricities to match his aesthetic everywhere, like a Pop Art–inspired backyard with giant Pirelli Tire signs and a sculpture of hot pink lips, and a huge stuffed bear adorned with beaded necklaces and canes.
Photo: Courtesy of Musée Rodin9/10Musée Rodin at the Villa des Brillants
The French sculptor Auguste Rodin lived in a Louis XIII–style house in Meudon, just outside of Paris. The site is now the second campus of the Musée Rodin (the first is where he actually worked and employed craftsmen, at the Hôtel Biron). The Villa des Brillants is where many of his ideas were cultivated and where he would illustrate the forms that would eventually become his brilliant works of art.
Photo: Courtesy of Atelier Cézanne10/10Atelier Cézanne
Paul Cézanne lived and worked for many years in a quaint house in Aix-en-Provence, France. He mainly resided in a small apartment just down the hill from his studio, but the house was perhaps his most cherished personal space. The museum there now holds some of his original still-life models, as well as his furniture and work tools.
