Dan Wingren: "Cataract," 1961

Dan Wingren

Dan Wingren

Dan C. Wingren: "Franciscans - Rome," 1958 Painting

Dan Wingren

Dan Wingren

Dan Wingren

Through the auspicies of eBay, I have acquired this small canvas by one of my Fine Art mentors, Dan C. Wingren. He painted this scene when I was three years-old and living in Gautemala City, Guatamala.

In the mid-1950s, Dan Wingren traveled to Europe and sketched images of towns and villages in France and Italy. In 1958, he was appointed director of the San Antonio Art Institute and taught painting at the McNay Art Museum (associated with the San Antonio Art Institute) until May 1961. He taught at Trinity University as a guest lecturer in the fall semester in 1961. Wingren moved back to Dallas in May 1962 to paint full time although in the fall of that year he taught a design class at SMU. In 1963 and 1964, Wingren taught drawing and composition and oil painting at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts School and, in 1965, he began teaching full time in the art department at SMU; he remained at the university until he retired in 1991. In 1971, Wingren was appointed Professor of Art; from 1969-1971 he served as Associate Chairman of the Division of Fine Arts. During his tenure at SMU, Wingren taught classes in art history (19th and 20th Century), design, drawing and painting, and also conducted seminars on contemporary art topics.

Dan Wingren: Paintings

Dan Wingren

Dan Wingren

Dan C. Wingren, Jr. was born in Dallas, Texas in 1923. His family moved to a small farm outside of Irving, Texas in the 1930s during his second year in grade school; Wingren graduated from Irving High School in 1940. 

During World War II, he served in the army and was stationed in the South Pacific (New Guinea, New Britain, Philippines) and Japan (Tokyo, Yokohama). After military service, Wingren received a Bachelor of Arts degree in art in 1947 from Southern Methodist University (SMU) where he served as a lecturer from 1946 to 1947. While at SMU, he studied painting with Jerry Bywaters who was well-known as an artist and director of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts (now the Dallas Museum of Art). He took additional classes at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts School with Bywaters and Otis Dozier, both well-established Texas regionalists artists. 

During the summer of 1947, Wingren traveled to Alpine, Texas to continue his studies with Dozier at Sul Ross State Teachers College, whose art department sponsored the successful “Alpine Art Colony” summer sessions taught by well-known regionalist artists. Also in 1947, he executed a serigraph of a color print for the portfolio XTOL by Octavio Medellin that was published by the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. 

Wingren received his Master of Fine Arts degree in 1949 from the University of Iowa where he studied with Mauricio Lasansky (printmaker), Hal Lotterman (painter), James Lechay (painter), and Byron Burford (painter). He stayed an extra year to work on a Ph.D under German-born art historian, William S. Heckscher (degree not completed). 

In 1950, Wingren joined the faculty at the University of Texas in Austin as an instructor and later (1955) promoted to an assistant professor; he taught life drawing and creative design until 1958. In the mid-1950s, Wingren traveled to Europe and sketched images of towns and villages in France and Italy. In 1958, he was appointed director of the San Antonio Art Institute and taught painting at the McNay Art Museum (associated with the San Antonio Art Institute) until May 1961. He taught at Trinity University as a guest lecturer in the fall semester in 1961. 

Wingren moved back to Dallas in May 1962 to paint full-time, although in the fall of that year he taught a design class at SMU. In 1963 and 1964, Wingren taught drawing and composition and oil painting at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts School and, in 1965, he began teaching full time in the art department at SMU; he remained at the university until he retired in 1991. In 1971, Wingren was appointed Professor of Art; from 1969-1971 he served as Associate Chairman of the Division of Fine Arts. During his tenure at SMU, Wingren taught classes in art history (19th and 20th Century), design, drawing, and painting, and also conducted seminars on Contemporary Art topics.

Wingren exhibited his work extensively in Texas during the 1950s and 1960s by way of art museum exhibitions and independent organizations, including the Texas Watercolor Society and the Texas Fine Arts Association. His work was accepted into numerous Texas exhibitions in Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio. In 1952, his oil painting "Explorer" received the $1000 "State Fair of Texas Purchase Prize" at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. 

Nationally, his work was accepted into shows at the Carnegie Institute (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), Denver Art Museum (Denver, Colorado), Knoedler Galleries (New York, New York), Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, New York), Oakland Museum of Fine Arts (Oakland, California), and the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, Minnesota). 

In 1955, Wingren was highlighted in the February issue of "Art in America" which featured articles on "New Talent in the USA." He was recognized in other art journals during the 1950s including "Carnegie Magazine," "Art News," and "Arts." 

Wingren received the Catherwood Foundation Traveling Fellowship in 1957, which allowed him to travel through Europe and continue his art studies for a year. In 1959, Wingren, along with James Boynton and Paul Maxwell, both of Houston, Texas, exhibited their work at the Galerie du Colisée in Paris, France. The show was organized by Wingren’s long-time art dealer, Meredith Long, in Houston. In the late 1950s, Wingren’s painting "Magician’s Cabinet" was purchased by Bernard Dorival, director of the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, France (now the National Museum of Modern Art located in the Pompidou Centre), for the museum’s collection.

Wingren continued to show his work throughout Texas during the 1960s. In addition, he gave lectures on art and art history and taught drawing, composition, and painting at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. In 1966 he was honored with a one-man show, a retrospective of his work completed since 1958, at the Pollock Galleries, then located in SMU’s Owen Fine Arts Center. He continued to show his work in faculty shows throughout his career at SMU. In 1968, his work was included in the exhibition "The Sphere of Art in Texas," held at the HemisFair in San Antonio, and in 1979 he was one of nine artists represented in the book "The Texas Gulf Coast," published by Texas A&M University Press.

In the mid-1970s, Wingren, collaborated with art professor and colleague, Mary Vernon (Professor of Art, Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor at SMU), in teaching First Year Design for all art majors. They later concentrated on advanced design classes for students during a time when the art department was experiencing tremendous growth. During this period, he continued with his personal art work and made drawings that focused on photo-based imagery. Many of these drawings are part of the works on paper collection in the Pollock Gallery at SMU. 

Wingren was also known to be intrigued with computer technology and in the 1970s built his own computer from kits and components at a time when personal computers were first being developed. He later commented “My head is somewhere near the intersection of the fields of art, history, psychology, engineering, and religion” ("Daily Campus," Southern Methodist University, June 21, 1988). 

In 1979, his manuscript "Design and the Visual Image" failed to find a publisher because reviewers found the material "too advanced for the introductory college student" and "more appropriate for professional journals."

During the 1980s, Wingren continued to give lectures at the Dallas Museum of Art and to participate in gallery and museum exhibitions. In 1988, he was part of the exhibition, "SMU Salon," held at the Crescent Hotel in Dallas that included work by three generations of SMU art faculty, students, alumni, and distinguished guest professors. The work was auctioned and the proceeds benefited the Meadows School of the Arts scholarship fund. In the same year, Wingren was awarded the "Meadows Distinguished Teaching Professorship" (1988-1989) by Eugene Bonelli, Dean, Meadows School of the Arts. The award carried a $5,000 cash prize and an additional $5,000 in professional support. By this time his work had been featured in 16 one-person shows since 1952, mainly in Houston, Paris, and New York.

Seven years after he retired from SMU, Wingren died in Dallas on December 31, 1998, at 75 years of age. A year later, a large collection of his drawings was donated to the Pollock Gallery at SMU. 

In 2006, his work was included in the exhibition "Shared Vision: Texas Artists Then & Now" at the Arlington Museum of Art, Arlington, Texas. The emphasis of the show was to look back and honor artists who had influenced contemporary Texas artists. 

Wingren’s work is located in numerous Texas museums and private collections, including the Archer M. Huntington Museum (Austin), Dallas Museum of Art, Witte Museum (San Antonio), McNay Museum (San Antonio), Texas Instruments (Dallas), First National Bank (Fort Worth), and Bank of the Southwest (Houston).

My Lieber Meisters

Jerry Bywaters

Jerry Bywaters

Dan Wingren

Dan Wingren

Roger Winter

Roger Winter

Louis H. Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright

Froebel Gifts

Frank Lloyd Wright often referred to architect Louis H. Sullivan as his "lieber meister" (beloved master). 

Louis Sullivan designed with the principles of reconciling the world of nature with science and technology. Form ever follows function was his famous dictum (Ludwig Mies van der Rohe later said "form IS function"). His buildings were detailed with lush, yet tastefully subdued organic ornamentation. His attempt to balance ornamentation into the whole of building design inspired a generation of American and European architects; the idea that ornamentation be integral to the building itself, rather than merely applied.

Frank Lloyd Wright joined the firm in 1888, after working for a brief period for J. Lyman Silsbee, also in Chicago. Sullivan provided a loan in 1889 so Wright could start building what is now known as the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio. Wright worked for Sullivan for several years, becoming the "pencil in Sullivan's hand" (as Wright put it). He became chief draftsman for Sullivan, and eventually was responsible for all of the firm's residential contracts (including the Charnley house completed in 1892). Louis Sullivan even asked Wright to design his own (Sullivan's) house. Wright was forced to leave in 1893 after moonlighting houses under his own name while working for Adler and Sullivan -- a betrayal of trust (the Harlan house, built in 1892, was the one that caused the rift). "This bad end to a glorious relationship," Wright reflected, "has been a dark shadow to stay with me the days of my life." While Wright was remorseful of these circumstances, and was usually very positive and enthusiastic about Sullivan and the role Sullivan had in shaping him as an architect, he was to have no contact with Sullivan for 20 years. The six years at starting out at Alder and Sullivan provided Frank Lloyd Wright an excellent foundation for his own advancement of architecture.

The tide of architecture turned against Sullivan around the time of the Columbian Exposition of 1893, during which the leading edge Chicago School-style design was rejected for a traditional neoclassical style. Sullivan's contribution, the Transportation Building, appears to defy the design requirements for the exposition nonetheless (compared to more typical buildings at the exposition, which included the building that now houses the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry). Sullivan predicted that the Exposition would set architecture back 50 years. This return to neoclassicism had liittle place for the design principles of Sullivan, and Sullivan himself was unwilling to follow this trend.

In a later phase of his career, Sullivan wrote books on what came to be called organic architecture. Sullivan insisted that architecture had to embody the human connection with nature and to democracy, while still accepting the most modern functional needs and materials. He railed against the prevailing architectural practitioners for failing to take these principles into account. The book titles were Kindergarten Chats and Autobiography of an Idea

Although Frank Lloyd Wright had reconciled with Sullivan at the end of Sullivan's life, Sullivan died in obscurity and poverty in a hotel room in Chicago in 1924. "Sullivan was elated with the evolution of Wright's work and saw him as a natural successor, the keeper of the sacred flame of architecture" (Donald Hoppen, The Seven Ages of Frank Lloyd Wright)

Dan C. Wingren

Dan Wingren

Dan Wingren

Dan Wingren

Dan Wingren

Dan Wingren

Dan Wingren

Here are some scans of paintings by one of my SMU art mentors, Dan Wingren.

Roger Winter and Dan Wingren: My Mentors

Dan Wingren Art

Dan Wingren

Dan C. Wingren Painting from 1954

I feel fortunate to have found and won at auction this oil painting by one of my mentors at SMU, Dan Wingren. He painted this evocative landscape scene a year before I was born.

Dan C. Wingren Paintings

Dan Clyde Wingren (1923-1998) was one of my main art mentors at SMU. His paintings are showing up more and more frequently in the secondary art market. Maybe I'll get lucky someday and find one I can own.

Dan Wingren Park Landscape Painting

Dan Wingren, Park, 36 x 48 inches, Oil on canvas.

Here's a low key landscape painting from one of my key mentors from SMU (c. 1974-1981), the late Dan Wingren.

Check out the "art babes" in Dan's class! He's much younger here than when I had him as an instructor.