Which art movement is most closely associated with Georgia O'Keeffe’s early charcoal abstractions?

Georgia O'Keeffe’s early charcoal abstractions are most closely associated with American modernism.

In 1915, O'Keeffe made a group of abstract charcoal drawings that reduced forms to energetic lines, curves, and tonal structures. She sent some of these works to Anita Pollitzer, who showed them to Alfred Stieglitz. Their presentation at his New York gallery helped bring O'Keeffe into the emerging American modernist conversation.

Her abstraction was not a permanent rejection of recognizable subjects. O'Keeffe later moved between abstract designs, flowers, buildings, bones, and landscapes, often simplifying visible forms without abandoning observation. That range is one reason she is difficult to place in a single narrow style.

American modernism is broader than one technique or school. O'Keeffe’s work is sometimes described through labels such as precisionism or abstraction, but her early charcoal series is most securely situated within the development of American modernist art.