Georgia O'Keeffe purchased property at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico in 1940.
Ghost Ranch is a dramatic area near Abiquiu, known for red cliffs, mesas, and broad desert views. O'Keeffe had first encountered the region during her New Mexico travels and began painting its distinctive formations. She later rented and then purchased a house and surrounding property there.
The landscape became one of the defining sources of her mature work. Paintings of the ranch and nearby cliffs reduce the terrain to powerful bands of color and shape, showing how she translated a specific place into modernist composition. She spent summers at Ghost Ranch and winters in New York for many years.
Ghost Ranch is not the same as O'Keeffe’s separate house and studio in the village of Abiquiu. That distinction matters because both locations are strongly associated with her New Mexico life. Ghost Ranch refers to the wider landscape and the property she acquired there in 1940.