Pedernal with Red Hills

Following an inspiring visit to Taos in 1929, Georgia O’Keeffe returned to New Mexico repeatedly and made her first visit to Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico, in 1934. She was captivated most of all by Cerro Pedernalis, a flat-topped butte in the northern Jemez Mountains. O’Keeffe was so taken by this mountain, she wryly claimed, “It’s my private mountain ... It belongs to me ... God told me if I painted it enough, I could have it.” The Pedernal became a reoccurring subject in O’Keeffe’s paintings and her ashes were spread at the top of the mountain upon her death. O’Keeffe’s desert landscapes including her Pedernal paintings are characterized by organic shapes reduced down to their most essential forms and colors.