Georgia O’Keeffe made her famous paintings of desert bones and adobe buildings in New Mexico.
O’Keeffe first visited New Mexico in 1929 and returned repeatedly before moving there permanently in the late 1940s. The state’s arid landscapes, pueblos, churches, cliffs, and animal bones became central subjects in her art. She often transformed ordinary objects into monumental forms through close cropping and simplified shapes.
Her New Mexico locations included Ghost Ranch and Abiquiú. The landscape around Ghost Ranch supplied recurring motifs such as cliffs and the flat-topped hill she called the “Black Place.” At Abiquiú, the patio wall of her house became another repeated subject.
New Mexico was not merely a late-career backdrop. O’Keeffe described the region as a place she had wanted to see since childhood, and it became her principal home and artistic setting after Stieglitz’s death. She died in Santa Fe in 1986.