Georgia O’Keeffe used charcoal for her groundbreaking 1915 abstract drawing series.
The series consisted of nonrepresentational drawings made with black charcoal on paper. Rather than depicting recognizable objects, O’Keeffe explored lines, shapes, spaces, and tonal contrasts. The works were radical for their time in the United States because they presented abstraction as a serious artistic language rather than as preparation for a realistic image.
O’Keeffe sent some of these drawings to the artist and educator Anita Steckel, who showed them to photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz exhibited them at his New York gallery, 291, in 1916. That exhibition helped bring O’Keeffe to wider attention and began an important professional and personal relationship.
The charcoal drawings are sometimes described broadly as “abstract paintings,” but the original works in this key group were drawings. The distinction matters because charcoal on paper was central to their visual effect and to their place in the history of American abstraction.