Georgia O'Keeffe famously used charcoal for her 1915 series of abstract drawings.
The series consisted of powerful black-and-white works made with charcoal on paper. Rather than depicting recognizable objects, O'Keeffe explored curved lines, repeated forms, and shifting shapes. These drawings are among the earliest fully abstract works produced by an American artist and were central to her emergence as a modernist.
O'Keeffe sent the drawings to her friend Anita Pollitzer, who showed them to Alfred Stieglitz in New York. Stieglitz exhibited some of them at his 291 gallery in 1916. O'Keeffe was initially upset that the drawings had been shown without her permission, but the exhibition began a professional and personal relationship that shaped her career.
The material matters because charcoal allowed O'Keeffe to work quickly and emphasize structure without color. She later became famous for oil paintings, but her breakthrough abstract series was made in charcoal, not oil or watercolor.