Georgia O'Keeffe made the abstract charcoal drawings that launched her mature style in 1915.
She created the charcoal series while teaching in South Carolina, after studying the ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow. The drawings reduced forms to energetic lines and shapes instead of presenting recognizable scenes in a conventional manner.
O'Keeffe sent some of these drawings to her friend and former classmate Anita Pollitzer. Pollitzer showed them to photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz, who exhibited them at his New York gallery, 291, in 1916.
The drawings were not her only abstract works, but they are widely treated as a decisive turning point. They established a personal visual language before she became widely known for flowers, landscapes, and desert imagery.