Which artist and teacher strongly influenced Georgia O'Keeffe at Columbia University?

Arthur Wesley Dow strongly influenced Georgia O'Keeffe at Columbia University.

O'Keeffe studied with Dow at Columbia University’s Teachers College in New York during the 1910s. Dow encouraged students to think about art through line, color, tone, and composition rather than simply copying appearances. This approach gave O'Keeffe a way to make personal, abstract images from visual experience.

His teaching was especially important because it helped her move beyond the academic realism she had learned earlier. O'Keeffe later developed a distinctive visual language built from simplified forms, strong contours, and carefully balanced spaces.

Dow was not her only important teacher. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York, and she also encountered ideas from European modernism. Still, Dow is the canonical answer when discussing the teacher whose design principles changed her artistic direction.