Georgia O'Keeffe began regularly visiting New Mexico in 1929. She traveled there during the summer and found subjects that became central to the next phase of her art.
The region offered dramatic cliffs, desert horizons, adobe buildings, animal bones, and intense light. O'Keeffe transformed these motifs into simplified, carefully composed paintings rather than straightforward travel illustrations. New Mexico's landscape also gave her distance from the pressures of New York's art world.
Her first New Mexico visits did not immediately mean that she abandoned New York. For years she divided her time between the city and the Southwest. After Alfred Stieglitz died in 1946, she moved permanently to New Mexico, eventually living in Abiquiu and later Santa Fe.
The year 1929 is therefore a key date, but it should not be mistaken for the year she permanently relocated. Her regular visits began in 1929; permanent residence came much later. This distinction helps explain how the Southwest gradually became both a subject and a home.