New Mexico became Georgia O'Keeffe's primary artistic home and inspiration.
O'Keeffe first visited New Mexico in 1917 and returned repeatedly during the 1920s and 1930s. She was drawn to its intense light, desert colors, cliffs, bones, flowers, and distinctive adobe architecture. These subjects became central to her mature style.
She moved permanently to New Mexico in 1949, three years after Alfred Stieglitz died. She lived and worked in Abiquiú and spent time at Ghost Ranch, north of Santa Fe. The landscape supplied recurring motifs, including the Pedernal mountain, which she famously described as her private mountain.
O'Keeffe had also lived and worked in New York and Texas, so New Mexico was not the setting of her entire career. However, the state became so closely linked with her art that she is often regarded as an emblematic painter of the American Southwest.