The gallery that first exhibited Georgia O'Keeffe's abstract drawings in 1916 was 291.
Alfred Stieglitz displayed a group of O'Keeffe's charcoal abstractions at his New York gallery, commonly known as 291, in 1916. The exhibition introduced her work to an influential circle of modernist artists, critics, and collectors. Stieglitz had seen the drawings through a friend and recognized their unusual power.
The gallery's formal name came from its address at 291 Fifth Avenue. It had been founded by Stieglitz as the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession and became a crucial venue for European modernism and American avant-garde art. It showed work by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Paul Cézanne.
O'Keeffe did not initially seek the public attention generated by the exhibition. Her abstract works were often discussed through the lens of European modernism, although her imagery developed from her own experiments with line, rhythm, and landscape.