Animal bones dominate many of Georgia O'Keeffe's 1930s paintings from the New Mexico desert.
O'Keeffe collected bones and other natural objects during her walks in the Southwest. She often placed them against the sky or a simplified landscape, turning weathered remains into sharply defined sculptural forms. Their bleached surfaces and strong contours suited her interest in abstraction and enlarged natural shapes.
Works such as Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue and Pelvis Series show how she transformed found objects into modernist compositions. The bones were not simply symbols of death. O'Keeffe also valued their beauty, structure, and ability to frame the surrounding sky.
Her subject matter extended beyond bones to flowers, shells, rocks, trees, clouds, and adobe architecture. A common misconception is that all of her New Mexico paintings depict bones; in reality, the objects form one important strand within a much broader body of Southwestern work.