Georgia O’Keeffe’s home is now on sale for $15million
Sol y Sombra, the adobe house Georgia O’Keeffe lived in until her death at the age of 90, is still up for sale. The property, nestled within 20 acres of land in Santa Fe, has been on the market since 2021 but hasn’t sold. The Paul Allen estate has now reduced the asking price from $22.6million to $15million.
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen bought the painter’s former home in 2000 for $12million. Following his death in 2018, his estate began selling its holdings and auctioning off his artworks for a record-breaking $1.5billion. A large percentage of the proceeds were donated to charity.
By the mid-1920s, O’Keeffe was regarded as one of America’s most important artists, having gained recognition for her paintings of New York Skyscrapers – then an essentially American symbol of modernity. In 1929 she made her first trip to northern New Mexico, where the sepia-toned landscapes inspired a new direction for O’Keeffe’s art. For the next 20 years, she spent the summer months living and working in New Mexico.
The house, not to be confused with O’Keeffe’s charming studio home in Taos, Abiquiú – currently part of the O’Keeffe Museum in New Mexico – is comprised of six bedrooms, two guest houses and a lodge. According to the listing, that’s 21 bedrooms in total. The property, which boasts beautiful exposed wood beams, was most recently used as a conference centre, and the lodge could easily be converted into an art gallery. There’s also an event centre, catering kitchen and roof deck.
The home also comes with a very special tree. In 1991, the Dalai Lama gifted Paul Allen a seed from the Bodhi tree that Buddha is believed to have meditated under to reach enlightenment. The tree is from that same seed. The buyer of the house will get to own the tree, along with Allen’s extensive cactus collection.
