New Mexico became Georgia O'Keeffe's best-known source of landscapes. She first visited the state in 1917 and returned regularly from 1929, finding subjects in its mountains, deserts, adobe buildings, churches, and animal bones.
O'Keeffe spent part of each year in New Mexico for decades before moving there permanently after Alfred Stieglitz died. She lived and worked at Abiquiú and also maintained a home at Ghost Ranch, north of the village. The region's intense light and sharply defined forms became central to her mature style.
New Mexico was not simply a scenic backdrop in O'Keeffe's paintings. She transformed local motifs into highly simplified compositions, often removing ordinary details so that rocks, doors, hills, and bones became powerful abstract shapes. Her work helped create a lasting association between American modernism and the Southwest.