Georgia O'Keeffe made her major series of abstract charcoal drawings in 1915.
The drawings were a decisive stage in her artistic development because they moved beyond the representational exercises expected in academic art training. O'Keeffe used sweeping lines, geometric rhythms, and open forms to explore feeling and visual structure rather than to depict a recognizable object. She later described these works as among the most original things she had done.
The series came after her engagement with the design principles of Arthur Wesley Dow. O'Keeffe was teaching art in Texas when she made much of this work, and she sent examples to her friend Anita Pollitzer. Pollitzer showed them to the photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz, who exhibited them in New York.
The year 1915 is sometimes confused with the dates of O'Keeffe's later flower paintings. Those paintings made her famous to a broad public, but the charcoal abstractions established the independent visual language that first brought her work to Stieglitz's attention.