New Mexico became Georgia O'Keeffe's most important later-life subject and home.
O'Keeffe first visited New Mexico in 1917 and returned repeatedly from 1929 onward. She was drawn to its mountains, desert, adobe buildings, bones, flowers, and intense light. These subjects became central to her mature work and helped create the visual identity most associated with her name.
She lived and worked at several New Mexico locations, including Abiquiú and Ghost Ranch. Her painting subjects often came from walks and drives through the landscape, where she collected bones and observed distinctive natural forms. She moved permanently to New Mexico in 1949, three years after Stieglitz's death.
New Mexico was not the place of O'Keeffe's birth or early art training. Those stages took place mainly in Wisconsin, Chicago, and New York. The state's landscape instead became the foundation of her later artistic world.