Georgia O'Keeffe's 1915 series of charcoal drawings is known as Specials. The drawings were crucial to the emergence of her mature abstract style and helped introduce her work to Alfred Stieglitz.
O'Keeffe created the series after studying Arthur Wesley Dow's ideas about composition. Instead of depicting recognizable objects, she used expressive lines, curves, and areas of dark and light to explore visual relationships.
She sent some of these drawings to her friend Anita Pollitzer, who showed them to Stieglitz in 1916. Stieglitz exhibited them at his 291 gallery, making O'Keeffe one of the first American artists whose work he presented as a new voice in modern art.
The series is sometimes confused with later paintings called Music or with O'Keeffe's broader group of early abstractions. Specials refers specifically to the charcoal drawings that marked her decisive break from conventional representation.