Arthur Wesley Dow taught Georgia O'Keeffe and influenced her approach to composition.
O'Keeffe studied with Arthur Wesley Dow at Columbia University's Teachers College in New York. Dow emphasized the principles of composition, including the organization of line, color, and tone, rather than requiring artists to imitate appearances literally.
His ideas helped O'Keeffe move away from the academic realism she had learned earlier. Around 1915, she produced a group of highly abstract charcoal drawings that expressed ideas and feelings through simplified lines and shapes. She sent some of these drawings to Alfred Stieglitz, who exhibited them in 1916.
Dow did not teach O'Keeffe to paint her later flowers or New Mexico landscapes directly. His importance was more fundamental: he encouraged an individual, design-centered way of thinking about art. William Merritt Chase was another important teacher, but he taught O'Keeffe at the Art Students League.