Georgia O'Keeffe moved permanently from New York to New Mexico in 1949, three years after Alfred Stieglitz’s death.
She had first visited New Mexico in 1917 and began spending part of each year there in 1929. The region’s landscapes, adobe buildings, bones, flowers, and intense light became central to her art. After Stieglitz died in 1946, she increasingly made New Mexico her permanent base.
In 1949 she settled there full time. She maintained a strong connection to Abiquiú and Ghost Ranch, places that supplied many of the forms and views in her paintings. Her move did not end her relationship with the New York art world, but it changed the physical setting in which she lived and worked.
The date is often confused with 1946 because that was the year Stieglitz died and O'Keeffe received her Museum of Modern Art retrospective. The permanent move occurred later, in 1949.