Which Georgia O'Keeffe painting features a red-and-yellow canna lily enlarged across the canvas?

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Georgia O'Keeffe's painting featuring an enlarged red-and-yellow canna lily is Red Canna.

O'Keeffe painted Red Canna in 1924. The work magnifies a flower so that its curving petals fill much of the composition, encouraging viewers to notice color, shape, and internal movement rather than seeing the flower only as a small botanical object.

Canna lilies became an important subject in O'Keeffe's flower paintings. Her close-up views often made ordinary flowers appear monumental, although she repeatedly rejected the idea that the paintings should be reduced to a single symbolic or anatomical interpretation.

Red Canna is different from Black Iris, which depicts an iris, and Oriental Poppies, which uses large red poppies. The specific flower in Red Canna is a canna lily, a plant known for its broad, dramatic petals.

Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Sept. 2026

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