What is the title of Georgia O'Keeffe's 1931 painting of a cow skull over a striped background?

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Georgia O'Keeffe's 1931 painting of a cow skull over a striped background is titled Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue.

The painting presents a large cow skull against vertical fields of red, white, and blue. O'Keeffe found animal bones in the New Mexico desert and treated them as powerful forms rather than ordinary remnants. The subject became one of the clearest symbols of her New Mexico period.

The title's colors evoke the American flag, but the composition is not a conventional patriotic scene. O'Keeffe's arrangement makes the skull appear monumental and isolated, combining a natural object with a distinctly national color scheme.

The work is often mixed up with O'Keeffe's other bone paintings, including Ram's Head, White Hollyhock-Hills and Pelvis IV. Those paintings also feature desert remains, but they have different animals, compositions, and titles.

Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Oct. 2026

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