Which teacher at Columbia University influenced Georgia O'Keeffe's move toward abstraction?

Arthur Wesley Dow influenced Georgia O'Keeffe's move toward abstraction.

O'Keeffe studied with Dow at Columbia University Teachers College in New York in 1914. Dow emphasized composition, design, and the expressive use of line, rather than requiring artists to reproduce nature literally.

This approach helped O'Keeffe rethink what an artwork could do. She began making charcoal drawings that reduced forms to energetic lines and shapes. Alfred Stieglitz later exhibited some of these drawings, helping bring her work to wider attention.

Dow was not O'Keeffe's husband or the gallery owner who promoted her career. Those roles belonged to different people and periods. His importance was primarily pedagogical: his ideas gave her a framework for developing an individual visual language.