[10] During this period, he also experimented with collage, combining paper cloud forms reminiscent of Jean Arp and surreal figures cut from sample stock certificates.
[12] His first solo exhibition of watercolors was held in 1936 at the Fort Worth School of Fine Arts, and one critic stated that Utter was "probably one of the most original and individual young artists in town.
"[1][13] In a 1938 announcement related to an exhibition at the YMCA of Oklahoma City, Charles Alldredge wrote, "Bror Utter, a young Texas of Swedish and Finnish extraction, sometimes paints like a Frenchman and sometimes like nothing else on earth.
"[14] In the summer of 1940, he continued his studies with the assistance of a scholarship at the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center under the guidance of Arnold Blanche, Adolf Dehn, Otis Dozier, and Boardman Robinson.
[12] He and a cadre of progressive Fort Worth artists, including Bill Bomar, Veronica Helfensteller, Dickson Reeder, and Donald Vogel, began to gain national attention in the 1940s, propelled by a 1944 group exhibition, Six Texas Painters, held at Weyhe Gallery, New York.
[1][12] Utter embarked on a series of productive painting trips to Italy starting in 1954 that reinforced his interest in architecture and influenced his work from this period, including a series of watercolors depicting Fort Worth architectural landmarks from 1956 to 1957 that was commissioned by First National Bank of Fort Worth, now in the collection of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art.
"[6] A home, studio, and garden he built on Mattison Avenue in Fort Worth was condemned in 1979 to make way for the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine, and afterwards he moved to a small apartment across the street from the Kimbell Art Museum.