Georgia O'Keeffe prominently painted animal bones in her 1930s Southwestern works.
After spending more time in New Mexico, O'Keeffe collected bones and other objects from the desert and incorporated them into paintings. Works such as Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue and Pelvis Series use bones as strong, simplified forms against sky or landscape. Their shapes allowed her to explore structure, space, color, and the visual effects of sunlight.
The bones were not merely anatomical studies. O'Keeffe often presented them as durable objects marked by the desert, and she connected them with the stark beauty of the Southwestern landscape. Their placement in broad fields of color made them appear both specific and abstract.
Viewers sometimes interpret the bones only as symbols of death. O'Keeffe resisted narrow explanations of her imagery, and the paintings can also be understood as close observations of form and light. Her bone paintings belong to the same larger practice that included flowers, shells, rocks, and architectural details: magnifying ordinary natural subjects until their visual power becomes unmistakable.