Object Image

Black Cross, New Mexico

“I saw the crosses so often—and often in unexpected places—like a thin dark veil of the Catholic Church spread over the New Mexico landscape,” said Georgia O’Keeffe about her first visit to Taos, New Mexico, in the summer of 1929. A member of the circle of avant-garde artists who exhibited at Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery 291 in New York, O’Keeffe had married the progressive photographer and dealer in 1924. What she encountered during late-night walks in the desert and then transformed into Black Cross, New Mexico were probably crosses erected near remote moradas, or chapels, by the secret Roman Catholic lay brotherhoods the Penitentes. As this pioneer of American modernism approached all of her s...
1929
Oil on canvas
99.1 x 76.2cm
1943.95
Image © The Art Institute of Chicago, 2019

Text courtesy of Art Institute of Chicago, 2019

Where you'll find this

Art Institute of Chicago
Permanent collection