New Mexico became Georgia O'Keeffe's best-known artistic home after she first visited it in 1917.
O'Keeffe first traveled to New Mexico in 1917, during a period when she was teaching art in Texas. She returned repeatedly during the 1920s and began spending more time there after the death of Alfred Stieglitz in 1946. The state's open spaces, adobe buildings, bones, cliffs, and intense light became central subjects in her work.
She lived and worked in several New Mexico locations, including Abiquiú and Ghost Ranch. Rather than treating the landscape as a simple backdrop, she transformed its distinctive forms into concentrated modernist compositions.
O'Keeffe's fame is often associated with New Mexico, but she was born in Wisconsin and spent important early career years in Texas, New York, and Virginia. New Mexico was the place she made most closely her own visually.