Music Pink and Blue II, 1918 by Georgia O'Keeffe

Though long celebrated as an important figure in 20th century modern art, Georgia O'Keeffe created a significant body of abstract work that was largely overlooked. Early in her career O'Keeffe withdrew from painting abstracts because her critics, she claimed, misread her works, interpreting them as psychological expressions of her sexuality. Instead, O'Keeffe intended her abstract work to be the very personal expression of the intangible, her feelings and esthetic about the natural world. Though even as she moved toward representational depictions of desert flowers and Southwestern scenery for which she is best known, abstraction was her guiding principle.

The oil painting, Music, Pink and Blue No. 2 (1918) was painted during O'Keeffe's early exploration of abstraction.

Music, Pink and Blue No. 2, was completed as O'Keeffe was transitioning from teaching in Texas to her career-launching life in New York. In 1915, O'Keeffe was introduced into the New York art scene when a friend shared a series of her highly abstract drawings with Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz exhibited ten of her drawings in a group show at his gallery, 291, which helped O'Keeffe gain recognition in the abstract expressionist movement.