New Mexico became Georgia O'Keeffe's principal home after she moved to the Southwest.
O'Keeffe first visited New Mexico in 1917 and returned regularly during the 1920s. The region’s stark landscapes, adobe buildings, bones, churches, and unusual geological forms became central subjects in her work. She spent much of the year in New Mexico from 1949 onward, after Alfred Stieglitz died, and eventually made the state her permanent home.
Her New Mexico paintings are not simply travel images. O'Keeffe developed a personal visual vocabulary from the region, isolating cliffs, doors, crosses, hills, and bones in compositions with large areas of color and simplified shapes. Abiquiú and the surrounding northern New Mexico landscape were especially important to her later work.
New Mexico is distinct from Arizona, another southwestern state frequently associated with American desert art. O'Keeffe’s best-known homes and studios were in New Mexico, including her Abiquiú residence, while her earlier adult career was centered in New York.