Black Place II

Artist: Georgia O'Keeffe (American, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin 1887–1986 Santa Fe, New Mexico)

Date: 1944

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 23 7/8 x 30 in. (60.6 x 76.2 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1959

Accession Number: 59.204.1

Description

"The Black Place" was the name O'Keeffe gave to one of her favorite painting sites in New Mexico. It was a stretch of desolate hills that she said looked, from a distance, like "a mile of elephants." Over a period of fourteen years (1936–49), this place inspired a torrent of work in paint, pastel, and pencil. Most often, she featured the jagged juncture of two hills, as in this fairly abstract interpretation of the scene.

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