Georgia O’Keeffe first visited New Mexico in 1917.
She traveled there during a summer break from teaching in Texas. The region’s distinctive light, mountains, desert forms, adobe buildings, and religious objects made a lasting impression on her. She returned repeatedly and began making New Mexico subjects central to her work.
O’Keeffe’s New Mexico imagery included cliffs, bones, flowers, churches, ranch landscapes, and architectural details. She often transformed observed forms through close cropping and simplified shapes rather than painting them as conventional topographical scenes.
Her first visit was in 1917, but she did not settle there immediately. She spent much of the 1920s and 1930s dividing her time between New York and the Southwest. After Stieglitz died in 1946, she moved permanently to New Mexico in 1949, first living at Ghost Ranch and later maintaining a home in Abiquiú.