Georgia O’Keeffe first visited New Mexico in 1917. She traveled there while teaching in Texas and was immediately struck by the region’s light, architecture, mountains, and open spaces.
Her connection with New Mexico deepened over the following years. She began spending summers there in the late 1920s and eventually made the state her permanent home. The landscape supplied subjects that differed sharply from the skyscrapers and interiors associated with her New York period.
O’Keeffe painted churches, adobe buildings, cliffs, desert plants, animal bones, and broad views of the surrounding terrain. She often simplified these subjects rather than treating them as conventional topographical views. This approach made the forms feel monumental and highly personal.
The year 1917 marks her first visit, not the beginning of her permanent residence. She did not move permanently to New Mexico until much later, after Stieglitz’s death. That distinction helps explain why her New Mexico identity developed across several decades rather than appearing all at once.