Georgia O’Keeffe spent much of her later career painting desert landscapes in New Mexico.
O’Keeffe first visited New Mexico in 1917 and returned regularly during the 1920s and 1930s. The state’s mountains, deserts, adobe buildings, animal bones, and intense light became central subjects in her work. She moved to New Mexico permanently in 1949, after Alfred Stieglitz’s death.
Her New Mexico paintings are not simply scenic records. She selected and reorganized forms, often isolating a bone, door, cliff, or mountain against a spare field of color. This gave local subjects a monumental and highly personal presence.
New Mexico is sometimes confused with Arizona in descriptions of Southwestern art, but O’Keeffe’s best-known homes and recurring subjects were in New Mexico. She lived and worked in Abiquiú and Ghost Ranch, and she died in Santa Fe in 1986.