Arthur Wesley Dow taught Georgia O'Keeffe at Columbia University Teachers College and influenced her abstract style.
O'Keeffe studied with Dow in 1914 and 1915. Dow emphasized composition, line, color, and the arrangement of forms rather than strict imitation of visible objects. His ideas offered O'Keeffe an alternative to the academic realism she had learned earlier.
After studying with Dow, she created a series of abstract charcoal drawings that became among the earliest purely abstract works produced by an American artist. Alfred Stieglitz later exhibited some of these drawings, helping bring O'Keeffe to wider attention.
William Merritt Chase was another important teacher in O'Keeffe's education, but he taught her at the Art Students League in New York. Dow is the specific teacher associated with the compositional ideas that encouraged her breakthrough into abstraction.