The White Calico Flower

1929

First journey to New Mexico

At the suggestion of Maria Chabot and Mabel Dodge Luhan she travelled by train with her friend, the painter Rebecca (Beck) Strand, wife of Paul Strand: in Taos Luhan took them in and gave them studios. From then on O’Keeffe visited New Mexico almost every year, often for months, returning each winter to New York to exhibit at Stieglitz’s gallery.

1929

Mountain and desert treks; “The Lawrence Tree”

In the summer of 1929 she went on pack trips through the rugged mountains and deserts of the region; the same year she bought a Ford Model A, learned to drive and explored the land she loved in it. Later she visited the nearby D. H. Lawrence Ranch, where she completed her famous oil painting “The Lawrence Tree”.

1929–1983 · Virkested

New Mexico

1931

Meets Frida Kahlo

At the opening of Diego Rivera’s solo exhibition at MoMA, Frida Kahlo met O’Keeffe and a friendship developed. They stayed in touch while O’Keeffe recovered from a nervous breakdown in hospital and then in Bermuda, and in the 1950s they visited each other’s homes on a couple of occasions.

1932–1934

Nervous breakdown and two months in hospital

A nervous breakdown, largely brought on by Stieglitz’s affair with Dorothy Norman, kept O’Keeffe from working from late 1932, and in 1933 she spent two months in hospital; in 1933 and 1934 she recuperated in Bermuda. She began painting again in January 1934.