New Mexico inspired Georgia O’Keeffe’s long-running desert landscape series.
O’Keeffe first visited New Mexico in 1917 and returned there repeatedly from the late 1920s onward. She was drawn to the state’s stark geology, adobe architecture, intense light, and open spaces. These subjects became central to her mature career.
Her New Mexico works include landscapes, churches, ranches, bones, flowers, and architectural details. She painted around Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu, and she repeatedly depicted Cerro Pedernal, a mesa-like mountain that became one of her signature motifs.
New Mexico is sometimes mixed up with Arizona because both states contain desert scenery and became important to twentieth-century American art. O’Keeffe’s best-known Southwestern base, however, was in New Mexico. She moved permanently to the state in 1949 and remained closely identified with its landscape for the rest of her life.