Georgia O'Keeffe's 1915 series of charcoal drawings, known as the Specials, helped establish her as an abstract artist. The drawings reduced natural forms to expressive lines and shapes rather than presenting recognizable objects literally.
O'Keeffe made the drawings while teaching in South Carolina and Virginia. They marked a decisive break from the academic conventions she had learned in art school and showed her experimenting with abstraction before it was widely accepted in the United States.
She sent some of the drawings to photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz. He exhibited them in New York in 1916, making O'Keeffe one of the first American artists to produce purely abstract works.
The series is sometimes confused with her later flower or pelvis paintings. Those later works also simplify forms, but the Specials belong specifically to her early charcoal experiments.