Arthur Wesley Dow taught Georgia O'Keeffe the influential composition principles she encountered at Teachers College, Columbia University.
O'Keeffe studied with Dow in 1914 while taking courses at Teachers College in New York. Dow emphasized arranging lines, colors, and tones rather than simply copying the visible world. His approach gave O'Keeffe a way to think about art through structure and design.
The influence was important because O'Keeffe had become dissatisfied with the limitations of academic realism. Dow’s ideas helped her develop more personal exercises in abstraction, which she later explored in charcoal and watercolor.
William Merritt Chase is another major teacher in O'Keeffe’s biography, but he taught her earlier at the Art Students League. Dow is the teacher associated with the composition principles that helped her move toward abstraction.