Which artist painted the 1926 work Black Iris?

Georgia O'Keeffe painted Black Iris in 1926.

The painting is one of O'Keeffe’s enlarged floral compositions, in which a flower fills much of the picture surface. Its dark petals and tightly organized forms demonstrate her interest in magnifying natural subjects until they become nearly abstract. The work is commonly discussed alongside her paintings of other flowers and plant forms from the 1920s.

O'Keeffe rejected the idea that her flower paintings should be reduced to symbolic interpretations. She emphasized looking carefully at the visual structure of the subject, while critics and viewers often supplied psychological or sexual meanings. That disagreement remains part of the history of her reception.

Black Iris is sometimes confused with Black Iris III, another O'Keeffe work from the same period. The titles refer to related floral imagery, but they are separate paintings. O'Keeffe’s repeated use of flowers does not mean every dark floral work has the same title.