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’Keefe, 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.