Exhibition Dates: April 2 — May 23, 2026 Public Opening: First Friday, April 3, 2026 from 6 – 8 PM

Wilbur Niewald: A Found Portfolio brings together a rare group of eleven watercolors spanning several decades of the artist’s career, from the 1960s onward. Ten of these works were recently discovered by the artist’s daughter in a previously unseen portfolio; the eleventh remained quietly present in Niewald’s own home for decades. Together, they offer an intimate view into a lifelong practice, one that moved fluidly between abstraction and observation, landscape and still life. Whether loosely structured or closely observed, each work reflects Niewald’s enduring commitment to painting as a direct, sustained engagement with what is seen and felt.

A central figure in Kansas City’s artistic community for over seventy years, Niewald balanced a rigorous studio practice with a profound dedication to teaching, shaping generations of artists while continuing to evolve his own work. As he described the shift in his practice after 1970, he turned from “looking for the universal” to “dealing with the particular… The ideal was the real.” These watercolors embody that ethos: at once grounded in lived experience and yet attentive to larger formal concerns. This exhibition marks an opportunity to encounter Niewald’s work through a body of paintings that remained, until now, unseen.