Georgia O'Keeffe found the landscapes that shaped her later career in New Mexico.
She first visited New Mexico in 1917 and returned repeatedly before making the state her permanent home. Its stark mesas, adobe buildings, desert plants, animal bones, and intense light became central subjects in her paintings. The landscape offered a sharp contrast with New York, where she had spent much of her professional life.
O'Keeffe lived in New Mexico for much of the year from the 1940s onward and moved there permanently after Alfred Stieglitz died in 1946. She maintained homes at Abiquiú and Ghost Ranch, north of Santa Fe. These places supplied both visual subjects and a sense of privacy.
New Mexico is sometimes called O'Keeffe’s “land,” but she did not limit herself to regional scenes. Her work also included flowers, abstractions, New York skyscrapers, and Lake George imagery. The state’s importance lies in how strongly its forms and atmosphere influenced her mature identity as an artist.