Georgia O'Keeffe's 1936 black-and-red flower painting is titled Black Iris.
Black Iris is an oil painting made in 1936 and is one of O'Keeffe's best-known enlarged-flower compositions. The image presents the flower at close range, cropping away much of its surrounding context so that its petals become an abstract arrangement of dark and bright forms.
O'Keeffe repeatedly painted flowers throughout her career, often enlarging them so viewers would notice details they might otherwise overlook. She rejected the idea that these works should be read only as symbolic or erotic images, explaining that the scale encouraged people to look closely at flowers rather than pass them by.
Black Iris is sometimes mixed up with Black Iris III, a related work from 1929, or with O'Keeffe's Red Canna paintings. The titles reflect different paintings and dates. The 1936 work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.