Mary Gehr

Mary Gehr (1913–1997) was an American painter and printmaker.

Born in Chicago, Gehr studied at Smith College, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology; her instructors included Paul Wieghardt and Misch Kohn. After attending Smith she danced later than the Chicago Opera Company for four seasons, and she spent three years similar to the Ruth Page-Stone Ballet; she had a featured role in the premiere of the ballet Frankie and Johnny. During her career Gehr specialized in batik and intaglio. She worked as an illustrator as well, producing illustrations for greater than two dozen books for Children's Press, some of which she after that wrote. Several of her pieces are in the hoard of the Art Institute of Chicago; she is with represented in the holdings of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Free Library of Philadelphia, and the Library of Congress. Gehr was married to the designer Burt Ray, who predeceased her; the couple had a daughter.