Georgia O'Keeffe used charcoal for the 1915 drawings that established her reputation as an abstractionist.
The drawings were part of a breakthrough series made while O'Keeffe was teaching in South Carolina. Rather than copying visible objects, she used sweeping lines and simplified forms to explore feeling and movement. These works were among the earliest wholly abstract pieces produced by an American woman artist.
O'Keeffe sent some of the drawings to her friend Anita Pollitzer, who showed them to Alfred Stieglitz in New York. Stieglitz exhibited them at his gallery 291 in 1916. That presentation brought O'Keeffe into the New York art world and began the professional relationship that shaped her early career.
The material matters because charcoal allowed strong contrasts, quick gestures, and expressive variation in line. These drawings are not the same as her later colored flower paintings, although both bodies of work show her interest in reducing visual experience to essential forms.