Georgia O'Keeffe's Pelvis Series uses pelvic bones to frame distant landscapes.
O'Keeffe began the Pelvis Series in 1944, using the openings in animal bones as visual frames for sky, clouds, and distant terrain. The bones' curved structures create windows within the paintings, allowing the landscape to appear both far away and physically enclosed.
The series grew from O'Keeffe's long-standing interest in bones collected in the New Mexico desert. She did not treat them merely as symbols of death; their forms offered strong shapes, negative spaces, and surfaces that could be studied as carefully as flowers or mountains.
The Pelvis Series is sometimes confused with her skull paintings, such as Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue. The distinction is the specific bone structure: the Pelvis Series centers on pelvic openings and the views visible through them. This framing device is one of O'Keeffe's most distinctive compositional ideas.