New Mexico became Georgia O'Keeffe's major later-life home and subject.
O'Keeffe first visited New Mexico in 1917, returned repeatedly during the 1920s, and moved there permanently in 1949 after Alfred Stieglitz died. She was captivated by the region's intense light, dry climate, mountains, cliffs, adobe architecture, and animal bones.
Her paintings of the state include desert abstractions, churches, crosses, hills, and views around Ghost Ranch and Abiquiú. The landscape was not merely a backdrop: it provided forms and colors that she transformed through close observation and simplification.
New Mexico is sometimes treated as the only place associated with O'Keeffe, but her career also included important periods in New York and Texas. Even so, the state became her defining late-life environment and remains central to museums, scholarship, and public memory of her work.