Red Hills with Flowers

The red and ochre hills of New Mexico roll across the canvas beneath a clear sky, with a scattering of flowers brought close in the foreground, the vast desert land and the delicate blossoms fused into one. Georgia O'Keeffe, who made the Southwest her great subject, merges intimate botanical detail with sweeping landscape in her clean, simplified forms. Now in the Art Institute of Chicago, Red Hills with Flowers shows her singular vision of the desert - the bare, sculptural hills she loved set against the fragile life that clings to them, monumental and tender at once.