What teaching method helped Georgia O'Keeffe develop her abstract drawings at the University of Virginia?

Arthur Wesley Dow's principles helped Georgia O'Keeffe develop her abstract drawings at the University of Virginia.

O'Keeffe encountered Dow's ideas through educator Alon Bement while teaching at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Dow emphasized composition, line, tone, and the expressive arrangement of visual elements rather than simply copying what appeared in front of the artist.

That approach gave O'Keeffe a way to think about art as design and personal expression. In 1915, while teaching in South Carolina, she produced a group of charcoal abstractions that reduced forms to lines and shapes. She sent some of them to her friend Anita Pollitzer, who showed them to Alfred Stieglitz.

The influence is sometimes described as direct study with Dow, but O'Keeffe did not study with him in person. She learned his principles through Bement and through Dow's teaching system, making “Arthur Wesley Dow's principles” the precise answer.