New Mexico became Georgia O'Keeffe's main late-career landscape subject.
O'Keeffe first visited New Mexico in 1929 and returned repeatedly during the 1930s. She was drawn to its intense light, desert terrain, adobe buildings, bones, and expansive skies. Works based on the region helped establish one of the most recognizable phases of her career. Her paintings often transformed specific places and objects into simplified, monumental forms rather than functioning as straightforward topographical records.
She eventually maintained homes in Abiquiú and at Ghost Ranch. New Mexico became so central to her identity that it is sometimes assumed she was born there, but she was born in Wisconsin. Arizona, Colorado, and Utah also have distinctive southwestern landscapes, yet New Mexico is the state most directly associated with O'Keeffe's mature artistic life and the subjects she repeatedly revisited.