Arthur Wesley Dow introduced Georgia O’Keeffe to influential modernist ideas at Columbia University.
O’Keeffe studied with Arthur Wesley Dow at Columbia University Teachers College in New York during the 1910s. Dow emphasized composition, design, and the expressive use of line, color, and tonal relationships rather than requiring students to imitate nature in a strictly academic manner. His teaching had a lasting effect on her artistic development.
Dow’s ideas helped O’Keeffe move beyond the conventional realism she had learned in earlier art schools. After studying with him, she began making experimental charcoal drawings that reduced natural forms to abstract arrangements. These works eventually reached the photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz, who exhibited them in New York.
Robert Henri was another important teacher in O’Keeffe’s education, especially at the Art Students League, but he was not the Columbia instructor connected with this shift toward abstraction. Dow’s influence is therefore a specific part of her training rather than a general reference to her teachers.