Wilbur Niewald

A native Kansas Citian, Wilbur Niewald spent his academic and teaching career at the Kansas City Art Institute. His notable career is highlighted with distinguished awards for both his place in the canon of American painting and for his exemplary skills as an instructor.

Born in 1925 to Joseph and Cora Niewald, Wilbur Niewald began art classes at the age of nine, attending Saturday classes at the Kansas City Art Institute. He enrolled in classes at the Art Institute immediately after graduating from high school in 1942. His education as an artist was put on hold during World War II when he enlisted as a pilot in the U.S. Naval Air Corps in 1943.

Niewald earned both his BFA (1949) and his MFA (1953) degrees at the Art Institute. He was invited by renowned Art Institute sculpture faculty member (and director of the Art Institute) Wallace Rosenbauer to teach watercolor courses beginning in 1949 and continued teaching at the college while earning his MFA. He also married Geraldine Beeler in 1949, and they celebrated the birth of their daughter Janet in 1953. By 1959, Niewald was appointed the chairman of the Painting and Printmaking Department. He chaired the department for the next twenty-seven years, creating a climate of diverse viewpoints and unique approaches to the arts.

Wilbur Niewald continued his own work as a painter, working in abstraction, and later from direct observation of reality. He admired French artist Paul Cézanne, stating in a Kansas City Star article in 1988: “Cézanne was a direct and passionate painter of nature. I feel that Cezanne was very true to what he saw” (_Kansas City Star, _March 15, 1988). While leading the painting department at KCAI, Niewald also exhibited and taught in other cities and countries. Solo exhibitions include the Nelson-Atkins Gallery of Art in 1966, Grand Central Moderns in New York City in 1963 and 1967, and many more. He also exhibited in many group exhibitions, including multiple exhibitions at the National Gallery of Design between 1995 and 2009.

In 1972 Niewald was selected as Artist in Residence at the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona (sponsored by Artists for the Environment and the U.S. Department of the Interior). He was frequently invited to teach at other colleges and taught in the summer programs at the Studio School in Paris and New York City as well as at Yale University, among others. 

The recipient of many honors and awards, Wilbur Niewald was awarded the academic honor of Senior Professor of Painting by the Kansas City Art Institute’s Board of Governors in 1985, the first time in the history of the college that the honor was bestowed. That same year, Niewald was selected by a panel of national colleagues as one of sixteen artists in the United States to be represented in the Hallmark Cards Inc. Artists Educators Exhibition. In 1988, he received the Distinguished Teaching of Art Award from the College Art Association of America, and in 1991 he received the Distinguished Teaching Award from the Kansas City Art Institute. Niewald retired in 1992 after forty-three years with numerous roles at the college.

In 1992, in celebration of Niewald's career, the Charlotte Crosby Kemper Gallery at the Kansas City Art Institute presented Wilbur Niewald: A 40 Year Retrospective, 1951-1991. The retrospective included a special panel discussion moderated by artist Deborah Rosenthal, Painting from Nature, with Niewald and artists Ruth Miller and Rackstraw Downes. 

In 1994 Wilbur Niewald was elected to the National Academy of Design in New York. Members are elected for life. In 1999, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Charlotte Street Fund based in Kansas City, Missouri. A prestigious Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2006 allowed Niewald to spend several months painting in Santa Fe. In 2018 the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art held a retrospective that included canonical works by Niewald. Nelson-Atkins Director Julián Zugazagoitia has commented on the joy that he gets each day looking at the painting by Wilbur Niewald that is from the gallery and hanging in his office.

Niewald's works are included in numerous public and private collections, including H&R Block, Hallmark Cards, United Missouri Bank, as well as the Kansas City Art Institute, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

He died on April 30, 2022 in Kansas City.