Georgia O'Keeffe repeatedly painted a New Mexico landscape she called the Black Place.
The Black Place was a dark, rugged formation near the village of Abiquiu. O'Keeffe described it as a group of hills and ridges with a black, intensely dramatic appearance, and she returned to it repeatedly in paintings made from the 1930s onward.
The site was part of the landscape that drew O'Keeffe to New Mexico after her first visit in 1929. She found subjects in the region's cliffs, bones, churches, and wide skies, often simplifying them into strongly composed shapes.
The Black Place is not the same as Ghost Ranch, another New Mexico location strongly associated with O'Keeffe. Both landscapes appeared in her work, and the similar desert setting can lead to confusion. O'Keeffe's naming of specific places reflects how closely her mature art was tied to observation of the local terrain.