Black Iris is Georgia O'Keeffe's 1926 painting famous for its close-up view of a dark iris.
The oil painting enlarges the flower so that its central folds and petal edges fill the composition. O'Keeffe's flower paintings often use this approach: instead of showing a botanical specimen at ordinary scale, she makes the viewer confront its abstract shapes and color transitions.
Black Iris is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The painting is sometimes discussed in relation to symbolic or anatomical interpretations, but O'Keeffe resisted the idea that her flowers should be reduced to fixed meanings. She emphasized looking closely at the forms themselves.
The work is distinct from O'Keeffe's red canna and poppy paintings, which also use enlarged flowers. Its title and nearly black-purple central form identify the iris as the subject.