New Mexico became Georgia O’Keeffe’s primary home and artistic setting from the 1940s. She had first visited the state in 1917 and returned repeatedly before moving there permanently in 1949.
The region’s desert, adobe buildings, cliffs, roads, bones, and flowers supplied subjects for many of her best-known paintings. O’Keeffe lived and worked at several New Mexico locations, especially Abiquiú and Ghost Ranch.
Her relationship with New Mexico began before the permanent move. She spent part of many summers there during the 1930s, and the landscape increasingly displaced New York as the central setting of her work.
The state is sometimes treated as merely a backdrop, but O’Keeffe’s paintings show a sustained engagement with its forms and light. She continued working in New Mexico for decades, and her Abiquiú home is now preserved as a historic site.