Painting of a bone-white cow's skull directly centered in a vertical canvas, adorned with gray-white roses. The background behind the skull is similarly pale and appears to depict stone, a deep black gap between sheets of stone bisecting the painting from top to bottom.

Cow's Skull with Calico Roses

1931

Georgia O'Keeffe (American, 1887–1986)

United States

Georgia O’Keeffe collected this cow’s skull in New Mexico during the summer of 1930, when a drought had devastated the Southwest, and many animal skeletons could be found in the desert. She was captivated by the stark elegance of the bones and shipped some back to New York so she could paint them the following year. She noted, “To me they are as beautiful as anything I know. . . . The bones seem to cut sharply to the center of something that is keenly alive on the desert.” O’Keeffe’s inclusion of the calico fabric roses—which were used to decorate graves in New Mexico—further evokes questions of life, death, and mortality.

Oil on canvas

Women artists

Chicago Artists

SAIC Alumni and Faculty

Arts of the Americas