Which artist taught Georgia O'Keeffe the composition ideas that influenced her abstractions?

Arthur Wesley Dow taught the composition ideas that influenced Georgia O'Keeffe's abstractions. O'Keeffe encountered Dow’s approach while studying at the University of Virginia’s summer school in 1912 and later through teaching and study connected with Columbia University.

Dow emphasized the arrangement of line, color, and tone rather than treating art as a simple copy of nature. Those principles gave O'Keeffe a way to build images from visual relationships and personal responses.

His ideas were especially important when O'Keeffe began making abstract charcoal drawings in 1915. These works moved away from direct representation and became a decisive step in her artistic development.

William Merritt Chase was also an important teacher, but he represented an earlier academic stage of her education at the Art Students League. Dow is the teacher most directly associated with the compositional theory behind her early abstractions.