Boyer Gonzales

born Galveston, Texas, 1909; died Seattle, Washington, 1987

BiographyBoyer Gonzales 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 on 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 with Henry Lee McFee he 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.

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.

[Source: Biographical sketch by Teresa Palomo Acosta, Faculty Council web site, University of Texas]

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