Georgia O’Keeffe first visited Abiquiú in New Mexico in 1931. The village and surrounding landscapes became central to her later work, and she eventually maintained a home there.
O’Keeffe had first traveled to New Mexico in 1917, but her repeated visits began in earnest during the 1920s and 1930s. She was drawn to the region’s cliffs, adobe architecture, bones, flowers, and intense light. Abiquiú offered a permanent base away from New York’s crowded art world.
Her Abiquiú house, with its distinctive door opening onto a courtyard wall, became a recurring subject in her paintings. Ghost Ranch, farther northwest, was another important place in her New Mexico life. These locations are distinct from one another, even though both appear frequently in accounts of her work.