Which Georgia O’Keeffe painting features a white cow skull against a blue New Mexico sky?

Cow’s Skull: Red, White, and Blue features a white cow skull against a blue New Mexico sky.

O’Keeffe painted Cow’s Skull: Red, White, and Blue in 1931, using a bleached cow skull as the central form. The skull is positioned vertically against a vivid field of blue, with red and white accents that connect the image to the colors of the American flag.

The painting belongs to O’Keeffe’s New Mexico series, in which animal bones became as important as flowers, cliffs, and adobe structures. She collected bones from the desert and treated them as durable, abstract shapes rather than merely as symbols of death.

This work is often grouped with O’Keeffe’s other skull paintings, including Pelvis with the Distance. The distinction matters: Pelvis with the Distance uses a pelvic bone and emphasizes an opening toward the sky, while Cow’s Skull centers on a cow’s skull and explicitly invokes red, white, and blue.