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Why did Georgia O’Keeffe return to New Mexico to work in 1929?

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Alfred Stieglitz: photograph of Georgia O'Keeffe — Georgia O’Keeffe Georgia O'Keeffe, photograph by Alfred Stieglitz, 1922.

Georgia O’Keeffe decided to spend the summer of 1929 working in New Mexico because she realized that neither the urban dynamism of New York City nor the landscape of Lake George could continue to sustain her creative efforts.1

By the end of the 1920s, O’Keeffe felt torn between her loyalty to her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, and her professional need to seek new stimuli for her painting. Having first visited the region briefly in 1917, she returned to the Southwest to find an environment that she described as exhilarating, providing the inspiration necessary to sustain her work for many years to come.1