Flower paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe

[4] By the mid-1920s, O'Keeffe began making large-scale paintings of natural forms at close range, as if seen through a magnifying lens.

She received unprecedented acceptance as a female artist from the fine art world due to her powerful graphic images.

On most of her canvases there appeared one gigantic bloom, its huge feathery petals furled into some astonishing pattern of color and shade and line.

[12] Alfred Stieglitz, O'Keeffe's husband who promoted her works of art, first espoused the theory that the paintings represented a woman's vulva in the 1920s.

[1][13] Tanya Barson, curator at Tate Modern, stated that male art critics perpetuated this assertion.

[15] She asked her friend, Mabel Dodge Luhan, to write of her work from a feminine perspective to counter interpretations by men.

[1] Beginning July 2016, Tate Modern conducted a retrospective of more than 100 of O'Keeffe's work, in part to provide additional views to the theory that her paintings are depictions of female genitalia.