Georgia O’Keeffe is especially famous for enlarging flowers in paintings.
Beginning in the 1920s, she painted close-up views of flowers at a scale that made petals and folds fill the canvas. Works such as Black Iris III and Jimson Weed present botanical forms as powerful abstract compositions rather than conventional still-life studies.
O’Keeffe explained that painting flowers large allowed people to notice them. Her paintings do not simply reproduce flowers botanically; they use shape, color, rhythm, and cropping to create concentrated visual experiences.
Some critics interpreted the flower paintings as sexual symbols, a reading encouraged partly by Stieglitz’s photographs and contemporary criticism. O’Keeffe rejected the idea that the paintings required that interpretation. She also painted New Mexico landscapes, animal bones, city views, and architectural details throughout her career.