Which artist and educator’s design principles strongly influenced Georgia O'Keeffe after 1912?

Arthur Wesley Dow strongly influenced Georgia O'Keeffe after 1912.

O'Keeffe encountered Dow’s ideas while studying at the University of Virginia summer school, where Alon Bement taught methods derived from Dow. Dow emphasized composition, line, color, and the arrangement of visual elements rather than simply copying visible objects.

This approach gave O'Keeffe a way to think about art as an organized visual language. It helped her move away from the strict representational exercises associated with her earlier training and toward the simplified forms and abstractions that became central to her work.

Dow was not the same person as the photographers and painters who later shaped O'Keeffe’s public career. Alfred Stieglitz exhibited and promoted her work, while Dow’s influence was primarily educational and theoretical. Confusing those roles can obscure how important teaching and design theory were to O'Keeffe’s early transformation.