Which teacher's design theories helped Georgia O'Keeffe move toward abstraction?

Arthur Wesley Dow's design theories helped Georgia O'Keeffe move toward abstraction. Dow emphasized composition through line, color, and tonal relationships rather than requiring artists to copy nature literally. O'Keeffe encountered his ideas while studying at the University of Virginia and later teaching art.

His approach offered her a way to make expressive images from simplified forms. Instead of treating art as direct imitation, Dow encouraged students to organize visual elements deliberately. O'Keeffe adapted these principles into her own language of sweeping lines, concentrated color, and reduced shapes.

Dow was not the sole source of O'Keeffe's modernism. She also encountered contemporary ideas through teaching, reading, and the broader American avant-garde. Her abstract drawings of the 1910s were especially important in establishing her reputation, and Alfred Stieglitz's exhibition of them in 1916 brought them to public attention.