Georgia O'Keeffe's 1926 painting Black Iris shows a dark iris flower enlarged against a pale background.
The work is one of O'Keeffe's famous flower paintings, in which a single blossom is brought close to the viewer and simplified into broad organic shapes. Its dark central folds contrast with the lighter petals surrounding them.
O'Keeffe began making large flower paintings in the 1920s. She said that people were too busy to notice flowers closely, so she painted them large enough that viewers could not ignore them. The paintings are often discussed as examples of American modernism rather than as straightforward botanical illustrations.
Black Iris is frequently confused with Black Iris III, another O'Keeffe painting from the same broad subject group. The shorter title identifies the 1926 work, while the numbered title belongs to a different painting. The image is also sometimes interpreted too narrowly as a symbol, although O'Keeffe resisted fixed explanations of her flower forms.