Georgia O'Keeffe's Pelvis Series was inspired by pelvis bones she found in New Mexico.
O'Keeffe began making her Pelvis Series in the 1940s, using bones collected in the New Mexico desert as subjects. She painted and drew the forms from different angles, often placing the openings of the bones against the sky. The series includes works such as Pelvis Series, Red with Yellow and Pelvis with the Distance.
The bones were not simply records of an archaeological discovery. O'Keeffe treated them as durable, abstract forms that could frame light and distant space. Their whiteness and weathering also connected them to the desert environment she had made central to her art.
Viewers sometimes group these works with her flower paintings because both bodies of work enlarge small natural forms until they become monumental. O'Keeffe rejected overly narrow symbolic readings of her art, so the series is best understood through its visual structure, landscape context, and repeated studies of form.