Specials was the title of Georgia O’Keeffe’s first major series of abstract charcoal drawings, made in 1915.
The series marked a decisive break from the representational art training that had shaped O’Keeffe’s early education. Using charcoal on paper, she explored lines, curves, and relationships between dark and light without directly depicting recognizable objects.
Several of these drawings were sent to a friend, Anita Pollitzer, who showed them to Alfred Stieglitz. He exhibited them at his 291 gallery in New York in 1916. That presentation helped bring O’Keeffe into public view as an innovative modernist.
The series is sometimes described only as her “charcoal abstractions,” which can obscure its catalogued title, Specials. O’Keeffe later moved between abstraction and recognizable subjects, including flowers, bones, buildings, and landscapes, rather than remaining exclusively nonrepresentational.