Ranchos Church

Georgia O'Keeffe

1930 · Oil on canvas · Modern and Contemporary Art

In this view of a mission church in Ranchos de Taos, O’Keeffe depicts the site as a cluster of rocky forms that seem to grow straight from the soil. In merging the land and the building and reducing both to elemental shapes, O’Keeffe testifies to the naturalness of abstraction. At the same time, she seems to erase the boundary between earth and architecture, the natural and the man-made. O’Keeffe began visiting the Southwest in 1929, and her experience of the region, as well as of its indigenous peoples, bolstered her interest in abstraction.

Artist

Georgia O'Keeffe

Date

1930

Medium

Oil on canvas

Department

Modern and Contemporary Art

Credit line

Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1961