Georgia O'Keeffe spent much of her later life in New Mexico and created many famous landscapes there.
She first visited New Mexico in 1917, then began making extended summer visits in 1929. The region’s desert light, adobe buildings, mountains, bones, and churches became recurring subjects in her art.
O'Keeffe moved permanently to New Mexico in 1949, three years after Alfred Stieglitz died. She lived mainly at Ghost Ranch and Abiquiú, while also maintaining connections with New York and traveling internationally.
New Mexico did not replace flowers as a subject; instead, it expanded her visual vocabulary. She continued to paint enlarged blossoms, but her later work is especially associated with the stark forms and intense colors of the Southwest. She died in Santa Fe in 1986.