Which Georgia O'Keeffe painting from 1935 shows a ram's head against a New Mexico landscape?

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Ram's Head, White Hollyhock-Hills is Georgia O'Keeffe's 1935 painting of a ram's head against a New Mexico landscape.

The composition combines a bleached animal skull with a white hollyhock and distant hills. O'Keeffe used bones as recurring subjects after collecting them in the Southwest, where their pale surfaces and strong silhouettes contrasted with the region's intense color and expansive space.

The work demonstrates how she joined close observation with deliberate rearrangement. The skull is not presented as part of a natural scene in ordinary scale; instead, it becomes a monumental emblem floating before the landscape. The hollyhock adds a living botanical form to the animal remains and terrain.

The title is easy to shorten incorrectly because O'Keeffe painted several related skull and flower compositions. The phrase White Hollyhock-Hills is essential to identifying this work. It also distinguishes the painting from Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue and from her separate ram's-head studies.

Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Oct. 2026

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