We begin a systematic study of the relations between subword complexity of infinite words and their power avoidance. Among other things, we show that -the Thue-Morse word has the minimum possible subword complexity over all overlapfree binary words and all ( 7 3 )-power-free binary words, but not over all ( 7 3 ) + -power-free binary words; -the twisted Thue-Morse word has the maximum possible subword complexity over all overlap-free binary words, but no word has the maximum subword complexity over all ( 7 3 )-power-free binary words; -if some word attains the minimum possible subword complexity over all square-free ternary words, then one such word is the ternary Thue word; -the recently constructed 1-2-bonacci word has the minimum possible subword complexity over all symmetric square-free ternary words.