Robert E. Stinson

1920 - 2018

(News story) BOWLING GREEN - Robert E. Stinson, an early hire to Bowling Green State University's art faculty, who was a painter, art historian and, with several colleagues, co-author of a long-popular textbook in art fundamentals, died Monday in Bridge Hospice, Bowling Green. He was 98.

He had Alzheimer's disease, his daughter Melanie Stinson said.

In 2002, a gallery in Grand Rapids presented an exhibit, A Retrospective, 60 Years of Painting. Mr. Stinson, in a statement released beforehand, said he liked to work from sketches and photos taken while traveling.

"I often digest my feelings about the places I've been - sometimes for years - to discover what I have to say about them emotionally," Mr. Stinson said in 2002. "So I guess you could say that part of a painting is based on memory - reminiscence - and the emotional longing, even melancholy that might come with no longer being there."

He retired in January, 1983, from BGSU as a professor of art. He was hired in 1949 as an instructor of art history and art fundamentals by Willard Wankelman, who had been hired in 1946 to form a university art department.

Mr. Stinson taught painting and art history, with a specialty in East Asian and prehistoric art.

"He loved teaching. He loved his students," said his daughter, who came to explore her artistic side as she became her parents' caregiver. "I was lucky. I got taught by him here at home in the last years of his life."

He was an author of Art Fundamentals: Theory and Practice, first published in 1960 and revised for decades afterward. BGSU reported when the fifth edition came out in 1981 that more than 1,000 colleges and universities in North America used the volume. A 12th edition was released in 2013. Mr. Stinson's coauthors included BGSU art faculty members Otto Ocvirk, Philip Wigg, Robert O. Bone, and David L. Cayton. He also wrote a condensed history of 17th and 18th Century art.

His best paintings were in oil or acrylic, his daughter said, and he didn't hold to one style.

"He went through periods, and you can see it," she said.

Mr. Stinson, before his 2002 retrospective, said: "I think one style would pall after awhile. I paint because I like to paint. I enjoy finding whatever subject matter appeals to me."

He was born Feb. 5, 1920, in Jeffersonville, Pa., to Olga and Spencer Stinson. He was a graduate of John Harris High School in Harrisburg. He sketched from an early age and aspired to be a cartoonist and architect.

Education at Indiana State College and then the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana was interrupted by Army service in World War II. He served in the Pacific theater, becoming a technical sergeant in an ordnance unit - and he was cartoonist and reporter for the 6th Ordnance Battalion news.

He received a bachelor of fine arts degree from Illinois and became a supervisor of art in Gettysburg, Pa., schools. He received a master of art history degree in 1948 and a master of fine arts in painting in 1949, both from the University of Iowa.

His interest in pre-Columbian art led to travels through Mexico, Central America, and South America.

He and the former Nilda Castro de Perea, who was from Peru, met at Iowa, when she was enlisted to translate material written in Spanish about Argentine artist Mauricio Lasansky, the subject of his master's thesis. They married in August, 1949. She died July 7, 2012.

Surviving are his daughters Melanie A. Stinson and Pamela Stinson-Bell.

A service to celebrate his life will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday at the Center for Conscious Living on Noward Road in Waterville Township. Arrangements are by Dunn Funeral Home in Bowling Green.

The family suggests tributes to the Center for Conscious Living, where he was a member; the Salvation Army; Bowling Green Food Pantry; the BGSU school of art, or Bridge Home Health and Hospice in Bowling Green.

This is a news story by Mark Zaborney. Contact him at mzaborney@theblade.com or 419-724-6182.