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IN MEMORIAM
BOYER GONZALES JR.
Boyer Gonzales Jr., onetime associate
professor of art, died on July 27, 1987. He was 78.
Professor Gonzales was born on February
11, 1909, in Galveston, Texas. He received a bachelor's degree from
the University of Virginia in 1931. He later studied painting for four
years in Woodstock, an artist colony in New York. Henry Lee McFee, his
most influential teacher at Woodstock, introduced him to the abstract
landscape painting developed by Paul Cézanne, who became the
major influence in his work.
In 1935 he participated in the Fourteenth
Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings at the Corcoran
Gallery in Washington, D.C. In 1936 his work was exhibited at the Rockefeller
Center, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Texas Centennial
Exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art. In 1937 Professor Gonzales and
Henry Lee McFee founded the Museum School of Art at the Witte Memorial
Museum in San Antonio. That year he also participated in his first solo
exhibitions, at the Witte Memorial Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts
in Houston. During his long career, he participated in more than 40
group exhibitions and thirteen solo exhibitions.
Professor Gonzales joined the faculty
of The University of Texas at Austin in 1939. After serving in the Army
Air Corps during World War II, he returned to the University, where
he chaired the Department of Art from 1946 to 1948. He resigned from
UT Austin in 1954 to accept a position as director of the School of
Art at the University of Washington.
Professor Gonzales was a member of the
Woodstock Art Association, the Southern States Art League, and the College
Art Association. He also served as vice president and director of the
National Association of Schools of Art.
Examples of his work are in the permanent
collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, the Witte Memorial Museum,
the Henry Art Gallery, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Tacoma Art Museum.
<signed>
John R. Durbin, Secretary
The General Faculty
Biographical sketch prepared by Teresa Palomo Acosta
and posted on the Faculty Council web site on February 21, 2001.
Additional biographical sources can be found in the UT Office
of Public Affairs and the New
Handbook of Texas, Texas State Historical Association,
1996.
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