Terry Dintenfass, 84, Owned Manhattan Art Gallery
Hyfler/Rosner
BY STEPHEN MILLER - Staff Reporter of the Sun
October 29, 2004
Terry Dintenfass, who died Tuesday at her Manhattan
apartment, was a charismatic female Manhattan art gallery
owner who came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s.
Dintenfass was known for her dedication to "social realist"
artists like Philip Evergood and Robert Gwathmey,
African-American artists like Romare Bearden and Jacob
Lawrence, and, later, the estate of Arthur Dove. The
gallery, located first on West 67th Street and later on West
57th, was equally devoted to exposing lesser-known talent,
and regularly debuted impressive artists.
In 1959, Dintenfass moved her art gallery to its West 67th
Street location from the Hotel Traymore in Atlantic City,
N.J., and it quickly became a hive of activity. Dintenfass
lived in the back of the gallery. Ornette Coleman, then an
unknown, sometimes slept on the floor.
Dintenfass had come to the city representing but five
artists: Evergood, Gwathmey, Herbert Katzman, Antonio
Frasconi, and Sidney Goodman; only Gwathmey had ever had a
show in New York.
By 1962, her regular stable of artists included Raymond
Saunders, William King, and Lawrence, whom she represented
for more than 25 years and placed in many public
collections.
As the 1960s wore on and styles like Op Art and Pop Art and
Super Realism came and went, Dintenfass stayed loyal to her
mainly figurative artists, and she still represented many
when she retired, in 1999. "She stayed with these artists
who were trying to make a statement, and they did well by
her," a professor of American Art at Boston University,
Patricia Hills, said.
Dintenfass was born Theresa Kline on Easter Sunday, 1920, in
Atlantic City. Her father was in his 60s and her mother in
her 40s, and young Theresa grew up as the youngest member of
a wealthy, extremely cultured extended family of Hungarian
extraction. They wintered in Palm Beach, Fla., and spent
their summers traveling. At age 17, having completed
finishing school at Fairfax Hall in Virginia, she attended
art school in Philadelphia. There, on the eve of World War
II, she met and soon married Arthur Dintenfass, a young
doctor. Dr. Dintenfass spent the war years setting up blood
banks in diverse locations around the nation, during which
time his wife was exposed to a greater range of culture than
existed back home. Thus, it came as a disappointment to her
when, at the end of the war, the family, now including three
small children, moved back to Atlantic City.
In 1974 Dintenfass told an interviewer from the Smithsonian
Institution that, over drinks one night in Atlantic City in
the early 1950s, "I said, 'It is the world's worst city.
I've just come back from Chicago, and they have the Art
Institute, and they have theater, and they have this, and
they have that. And there's no reason that this town, being
the big convention city that it is, couldn't have a
gallery.'"
Having good contacts through family and friends, she found
herself in 1954 the proprietress of a small gallery at the
Dennis Hotel, stocked with paintings on loan from New York
galleries. The first show featured canvasses by Georgia
O'Keeffe, Ben Shahn, and Herbert Katzman. The Dennis was run
by Quakers, and Dintenfass felt limited about what subjects
could be exhibited. Thus it came as a relief when she moved
to the more cosmopolitan confines of the Hotel Traymore,
where she was offered her gallery space for $1 a year.
In 1959, backed by the financier Armand Erpf, she moved to
New York and opened her gallery on West 67th Street.
Dintenfass became the protege of Edith Halpert, one of the
doyennes of the New York art world since the 1930s. When
Halpert retired in the early 1960s, several of her clients
moved to Dintenfass, including the Dove estate.
Dintenfass was known as an ebullient and forceful
personality, and was often found with a drink in hand,
enthusing over some new canvas. She was married three times
and had many close friendships, including one with Gwathmey,
of whom she told an intimate recently that she hoped she'd
see him in heaven or hell, wherever she was going.
Dintenfass was gratified by the successes of her children,
all involved in art - one an art curator, one a
psychiatrist, one a cinematographer. Her brother was Dr.
Nathan Kline, a pioneer of psychopharmacology who won two
Lasker awards.
Seemingly not tormented by her impending demise, she told
her friend, "I've done everything in my life. Open a bottle
of Champagne and enjoy yourself."
Theresa Kline Dintenfass
Born April 4, 1920, at Atlantic City; died October 26 in
Manhattan of cancer; survived by her children, John, Susan
Subtle Dintenfass, and Andrew, and three grandchildren.