Georgia O'Keeffe created the 1915 series of abstract charcoal drawings that launched her career.
The drawings were among the first wholly abstract works produced by an American artist. O'Keeffe used charcoal lines and shapes rather than recognizable objects, allowing rhythm, movement, and tonal contrast to carry the compositions.
She sent the drawings to her friend Anita Pollitzer, who showed them to Alfred Stieglitz in New York. Stieglitz exhibited some of them at 291 in 1916. That presentation brought O'Keeffe to the attention of the New York art world and began her long professional relationship with Stieglitz.
The drawings are sometimes incorrectly attributed to Stieglitz because he exhibited and photographed O'Keeffe, but he did not create them. Their importance lies in how decisively they established her independent modernist voice before her famous flower and landscape paintings.