Georgia O'Keeffe used charcoal for her breakthrough 1915 abstraction series.
The drawings were among her earliest fully abstract works and reduced visual forms to energetic lines, curves, and areas of tone. They were made while she was teaching art in South Carolina and represented a deliberate break from the more conventional academic exercises she had previously studied.
O'Keeffe sent examples of the drawings to the photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz through Anita Pollitzer. Stieglitz exhibited them in New York in 1916, bringing national attention to the young artist.
The medium is important because charcoal allowed O'Keeffe to work directly and quickly on paper. Although she later became famous for oil paintings of flowers, landscapes, and bones, the 1915 series was a black-and-white drawing project rather than an oil-painting cycle.