Georgia O'Keeffe's 1936 painting of a white flower on a black background is titled Black Iris.
Black Iris is an oil painting associated with O'Keeffe's close-up flower studies. The work presents an iris in a highly enlarged view, using pale petals against a dark ground to emphasize the flower's folds, curves, and central structure.
O'Keeffe painted several iris subjects and gave multiple works related titles, so the year and visual description matter. The painting is sometimes mixed up with Black Iris III, a different work from 1926, or with her famous Jimson Weed paintings. These works share O'Keeffe's interest in magnification but depict different plants and compositions.
Her flower paintings were widely reproduced and became some of the most recognizable images in American modernism. O'Keeffe argued that enlarging a flower encouraged people to notice it, since most viewers would otherwise pass by a small blossom without truly seeing it.