Alon Bement was Georgia O'Keeffe's teacher at the University of Virginia and an early influence on her abstraction.
O'Keeffe encountered Bement's teaching while taking summer courses at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Bement had worked with the educator Arthur Wesley Dow, whose ideas emphasized composition, line, color, and the expressive arrangement of forms rather than simply copying visible reality.
Through Bement and Dow's approach, O'Keeffe became interested in reducing subjects to essential shapes and rhythms. She later taught art herself and used these ideas in experimental charcoal drawings that helped establish her independent style. Her early abstractions were among the most radical works made by an American artist at the time.
Bement is often confused with Dow because Dow's theories were especially influential in O'Keeffe's development. However, Bement was the direct teacher connected with her University of Virginia study. O'Keeffe later studied with Dow at Columbia University Teachers College, deepening the influence that began through Bement's instruction.