Alon Bement introduced Georgia O'Keeffe to the artistic principles of Arthur Wesley Dow.
O'Keeffe encountered Dow's ideas while studying at the University of Virginia's summer school in 1912. Bement, who taught there, had been a colleague of Dow's and presented an approach that emphasized composition, line, tone, and design rather than simply copying visible objects.
That encounter was pivotal because it encouraged O'Keeffe to think of art as an arrangement of formal elements. She later made a series of abstract charcoal drawings in 1915, works that departed sharply from the conventional academic exercises she had previously produced.
The drawings reached Alfred Stieglitz, who exhibited them at his New York gallery 291. O'Keeffe is often associated with Stieglitz because he promoted her work and later married her, but Bement was the teacher who directly brought Dow's ideas into her education.