A cow's skull appears in Georgia O'Keeffe's 1931 painting Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue.
The painting shows a bleached cow skull centered against bands of red, white, and blue. O'Keeffe found animal bones in the New Mexico landscape and transformed them into carefully composed subjects, treating their contours as powerful abstract forms rather than as ordinary remains.
The skull paintings have often been interpreted through American symbols because of their colors and stark arrangement. However, O'Keeffe repeatedly emphasized her direct interest in the objects and landscapes she encountered. The title identifies the subject precisely as a cow's skull.
This work belongs to her New Mexico period, even though it was painted before her permanent move to the state. Her recurring bone imagery helped connect her close observation of nature with the simplified forms of modernist painting.