Red Canna is a 1924 Georgia O'Keeffe painting famous for its enlarged red flower form.
O'Keeffe painted flowers at a greatly enlarged scale, encouraging viewers to notice shapes, folds, color transitions, and edges that might be overlooked in an ordinary close-up view. Red Canna is part of this important body of flower paintings and presents the canna's petals as a powerful, nearly abstract composition.
The work belongs to the period when O'Keeffe was gaining wide recognition through Alfred Stieglitz's exhibitions. Her flower paintings became some of her most familiar images, although she resisted the idea that they should be read only as symbols of female sexuality.
Red Canna is sometimes confused with O'Keeffe's paintings of poppies, irises, or jimson weeds. The flower in this title is specifically a canna, and the painting's date is 1924.