New Mexico’s landscapes became a major subject of Georgia O’Keeffe’s later paintings. She first visited the state in 1917 and returned regularly before settling there permanently after Alfred Stieglitz’s death in 1946.
O’Keeffe was drawn to the region’s intense light, adobe architecture, desert plants, mountains, and animal bones. She painted places around Abiquiu, Ghost Ranch, and other parts of northern New Mexico, transforming recognizable subjects through simplification and unusual viewpoints.
Her New Mexico work included landscapes as well as cultural and natural objects. She painted churches, doors, crosses, skulls, and the distinctive volcanic mountain Pedernal, which she described as her private mountain.
Although she is strongly associated with New Mexico, O’Keeffe did not begin her career there. Her earlier work included abstractions and paintings of New York buildings. The state became the central setting of her later life and artistic identity.