Georgia O´Keeffe is, like Frida Kahlo, universally known and widely admired both as a model of feminist independence and as a pioneering artist. O´Keeffe, who came from rural Wisconsin, had encouragement from art teachers, later taught art, and then studied art at the Art Students´League in New York where she mastered the prevailing realist style of the moment only to reject it. Dissatisfied with this formulaic approach, she left New York in 1929 for the American Southwest, where she could observe nature closely. She created her own visual language to capture a deeper and more symbolically loaded reality. Her still-life paintings of flowers and of skulls isolated against landscape or neutral backgrounds allow the viewer to see pure form or sensual imagery.

O´Keeffe, who often preferred to work in isolation, built a house and studio in Taos, New Mexico, a place to which she returned yearly, where the landscape inspired her and she could work remote from the pressures of the New York art world. The panoramic vistas, vast blue skies, and sun-baked earth left an indelible impression upon the artist. In 1946, following the death of Steiglitz, O´Keeffe became a full-time resident of Taos. This painting is O´Keeffe´s first skull painting.

Ted G. Decker, Laura F. Stewart, Marilyn A. Zeitlin