Georgia O'Keeffe spent much of her later life painting in New Mexico.
She first visited New Mexico in 1917 and returned repeatedly during the 1920s. The region's cliffs, adobe buildings, desert plants, bones, and intense light became enduring subjects in her art. In 1949, three years after Alfred Stieglitz's death, she moved permanently to New Mexico.
O'Keeffe divided her time between homes in Abiquiú and Ghost Ranch. She frequently explored the surrounding landscape and developed a highly personal visual vocabulary from its forms. Paintings such as her works featuring the Cerro Pedernal show how particular places could become recurring motifs.
New Mexico was not the place where O'Keeffe was born or trained. Wisconsin, Chicago, New York, and Lake George were also important parts of her biography, but the Southwest became the defining setting of her later career.