“The world is so wide up there, so big!” wrote Georgia O’Keeffe on her first visit to Taos. The astonishing scale of New Mexico would draw her annually, and in the 1940s she moved there permanently. An abstract artist when she began her career, in the early 20th century, O’Keeffe became known for her celebrated flower paintings and views of New York City. But it was the New Mexico paintings that won her the status of America’s native daughter. A new book, Georgia O’Keeffe, traces the artist’s life through her paintings; the text has been contributed by curators from the venues to which the accompanying exhibition—on at Madrid’s Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza until August 8—travels. Next up: the Centre Pompidou, in Paris. —Julia Vitale

Georgia O’Keeffe is published by D.A.P. with the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza.

Paintings: Colección Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza en Depósito en el Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines/Nathan Emory Coffin Collection/© Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Photo: Rich Sanders; Brooklyn Museum/Bequest of Edith and Milton Lowenthal/© Georgia O’Keeffe Museum; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland; the Collection of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe; the Collection of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Gift of the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio/Museum purchase, Howald Fund II; Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid/© Georgia O’Keeffe Museum; Georgia O’Keeffe Museum; Milwaukee Art Museum/Gift of the Jane Bradley Pettit Foundation and the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation. Photo: courtesy of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum