Georgia O'Keeffe's 1915 series known as Specials pioneered pure abstraction in her work. The charcoal drawings reduced forms to lines, curves, and tonal structures without directly depicting recognizable objects.
O'Keeffe made the series while teaching in South Carolina, during a period when she was searching for a more personal visual language. She sent some of these drawings to the photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz. He exhibited them in New York, making them an important early link between O'Keeffe and the modern-art network that later supported her career.
The series is sometimes confused with her later flower, landscape, or architectural paintings because all use simplified forms. Specials is significant specifically because it represents a sustained move into nonobjective art. O'Keeffe later returned to identifiable natural subjects, but abstraction remained an important part of her artistic vocabulary.