Which New Mexico feature inspired Georgia O'Keeffe's painting Pelvis Series?

Animal bones inspired Georgia O'Keeffe's Pelvis Series.

O'Keeffe began making paintings of bones after finding them in the New Mexico desert. In the Pelvis Series, she used the openings and curves of animal pelvis bones as frames for the sky and distant landscape, combining close observation with bold abstraction.

The bone pictures belong to her mature New Mexico work, alongside paintings of flowers, cliffs, ranch buildings, and skulls. They are not anatomical studies in a scientific sense; O'Keeffe transformed natural objects into simplified shapes and compositional structures.

The series is sometimes confused with her paintings of cow skulls. Both subjects came from the desert, but Pelvis Series focuses specifically on pelvis bones and their openings. This distinction matters because the empty spaces inside the bones became central to the series' visual idea.