Georgia O’Keeffe created the 1915 charcoal drawings that first established her as an abstract artist.
In 1915, O’Keeffe made a series of highly abstract charcoal drawings while teaching in South Carolina. She sent some of them to a friend, Anita Pollitzer, who showed them to Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz exhibited the drawings at his 291 gallery in New York in 1916, making them among the earliest abstract works by an American artist to receive that kind of public attention.
The drawings were not commissions by Stieglitz, and he did not make them. His role was as exhibitor and promoter. O’Keeffe later moved among abstraction, botanical subjects, architecture, and landscape, but the charcoal series was a crucial breakthrough because it expressed emotion through line, shape, and rhythm without directly depicting recognizable objects.