Georgia O’Keeffe first exhibited her abstract drawings in 1916 at 291, Alfred Stieglitz’s New York gallery. The gallery’s official name was the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, but it became widely known by its address, 291 Fifth Avenue.
Stieglitz had received the drawings from photographer and educator Anita Pollitzer, who showed them to him without O’Keeffe’s prior arrangement. He was impressed enough to exhibit them, helping launch O’Keeffe’s public career as a modernist.
The gallery closed in 1917, but its exhibitions had already introduced American audiences to European avant-garde art and innovative American work. O’Keeffe’s later association with Stieglitz made the gallery an important part of her early biography.