Ture Bengtz (1907 – November 10, 1973) was a

Finnish-American Finnish Americans ( fi, amerikansuomalaiset, ) comprise Americans with ancestral roots from Finland or Finnish people who immigrated to and reside in the United States. The Finnish-American population numbers a little bit more than 650,000. Man ...

artist associated with the Boston Expressionist school, an influential teacher at the

School of the Museum of Fine Arts The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University (Museum School, SMFA at Tufts, or SMFA; formerly the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) is the art school of Tufts University, a private research university in Boston, Massachus ...

in Boston, and director of the

Art Complex Museum The Art Complex Museum, located in Duxbury, Massachusetts, south of Boston, serves as a regional arts center and houses the collection of Carl A. Weyerhaeuser (1901-1996) and his wife Edith Greenleaf Weyerhaeuser (1912-2000). The museum is free ...

in Duxbury, Massachusetts. He also had a television show, "Bengtz on Drawing," on Boston's

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station in the late 1950s.

Early life and education

Bengtz was born in Åland, Finland, in 1907. At the age of 18 he emigrated from Finland to the United States to live with relatives in

Medford, Massachusetts Medford is a city northwest of downtown Boston on the Mystic River in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. At the time of the 2020 U.S. Census, Medford's population was 59,659. It is home to Tufts University, which has its campus alo ...

. He worked as a housepainter and went to night school to learn English. While taking an art class at night school, a teacher noticed Bengtz's talent and suggested he apply to an art school. Bengtz enrolled at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (the "museum school") in 1928. He won the school's top scholarship, the Paige Traveling Scholarship, which allowed him to study in Europe for two years. He graduated in 1933.

Career

Bengtz taught at the museum school from 1934 to 1969. During the 1940s he taught all four years of drawing, as well as anatomy and lithography, while

Karl Zerbe Karl Zerbe (September 16, 1903 – November 24, 1972) was a German-born American painter and educator. Biography Karl Zerbe was born on September 16, 1903 in Berlin, Germany. The family lived in Paris, France from 1904–1914, where his fat ...

taught all four years of painting. He founded the Graphics Department in 1939 and became head of the Drawing and Graphic Arts Department in 1941. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

he worked as a technical illustrator for the

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. In 1937 he had a solo exhibition of paintings and drawings at the

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. The art critic for the ''Boston Globe'' called him a "versatile genius" and "one of the most promising of the younger group of Boston artists." He continued to work with various media, exhibiting his work at Boston and New York galleries. Today he is best known for his lithographs. In 1946 he co-founded the Boston Printmakers Association, which is still in operation today. He was a member of the Board of Governors of the

Copley Society of Art The Copley Society of art is America's oldest non-profit art association. It was founded in 1879 by the first graduating class of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and continues to play an important role in promoting its member artists and th ...

and a

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of the Masonic lodge in

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. From 1957 to 1960 he had a television show on

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, "Bengtz on Drawing," in which he demonstrated and lectured on the drawing of the human form. In 1968 he created a stained glass window for St. Olaf's Church, a 13th-century church in his ancestral home of Jomala; the window depicts Christ and St. Olaf, patron saint of Åland.

Later years

After retiring from the museum school, Bengtz worked with the Carl A. Weyerhaeuser family to plan and launch the

in Duxbury, Massachusetts. He worked with the architect on the building plan, and became the museum's first director in 1971. He also taught art classes at

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original campu ...

. Bengtz died at his home in Duxbury, Massachusetts, on November 10, 1973. His works are included in the permanent collections of the

Boston Museum of Fine Arts The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

, the

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, the

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, the

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, and other museums and private collectors. His papers are on file with the

Boston Public Library The Boston Public Library is a municipal public library system in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, founded in 1848. The Boston Public Library is also the Library for the Commonwealth (formerly ''library of last recourse'') of the Commonweal ...

. The Art Complex Museum named its Bengtz Gallery in his honor, and published a collection of his lithographs in 1978. In 2007, the centennial of his birth was marked in Finland with an exhibition at the Önningebymuseet, and in 2010 the Finnish government issued a postage stamp featuring a detail from the stained glass window he created for St. Olaf's Church.

References

External links

"Cocoon II" by Ture Bengtz (lithograph, ca. 1955)

"Audience" by Ture Bengtz (etching, ca. 1940-45)

Åland postage stamp with detail from Ture Bengtz stained glass window
!--archived at https://archive.today/20171125010054/https://i.pinimg.com/736x/ba/2b/09/ba2b09651a78da680c8719fdbc21a07e.jpg --> * (Photographer:

John Brook John Brook (1924-2016) was a Boston photographer who gained national recognition in the mid-20th century. Early life and education He was born to English immigrant parents in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, in 1924. He taught himself photography as ...

)
1956 video clip from "Bengtz on Drawing"

Boston Printmakers Association
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bengtz, Ture 1907 births 1973 deaths School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts alumni School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts faculty Artists from Boston 20th-century American painters American male painters American lithographers American stained glass artists and manufacturers Finnish emigrants to the United States People from Åland 20th-century American male artists 20th-century lithographers