Margaret Webb Dreyer (29 September 1911 – December 17, 1976) was an American painter, muralist, mosaic artist, educator, gallery owner, and political activist who spent most of her career in Houston, Texas.

Martin Dreyer was a fiction writer published in Esquire, Prairie Schooner, and the university-based "little magazines" of the 1940s, and whose work was "starred" in several editions of the Best Short Stories of the Year.

[5] They had one son, Thorne Webb Dreyer, a journalist and political activist who was a pioneer in the Sixties underground press movement and a founding editor of The Rag in Austin and Space City!

He now lives in Austin, where he is a director of the New Journalism Project, edits The Rag Blog, and hosts a syndicated weekly radio show.

"[8] Though the family was not wealthy, Dreyer frequently offered financial stipends to young artists, hired them to work at her gallery, and bought paintings from their shows, sometimes anonymously.

She climbed up on a chair in the main gallery room and gave her pitch to assorted folks packed around the pre-Columbian sculptures and other obstacles d'art."

Dreyer Galleries also hosted Ramparts publisher and editor Warren Hinckle, filmmakers Robert Altman and Lou Adler, Houston Mayor Fred Hofheinz, U.S.

In the middle and late 1960s, Margaret and Martin Dreyer played a prominent and very public role in social and progressive political causes.

The Houston Review's Robert V. Haynes wrote that, "In addition to being a champion of the arts in a city that valued materialism above cultural things, [Margaret Dreyer] was also an ardent supporter of liberal causes and a passionate critic of the Vietnam War.

Thorne later wrote, "Ironically, the work of the KKK scared nobody off, and if anything, the violent acts just seemed to strengthen the commitment of the peace activists and counterculture denizens--and made the radical community even more cohesive and purposeful.

Margaret Dreyer was one of Houston's earliest and most accomplished watercolorists — often working in the difficult medium of wet watercolor — in a style that was once compared to that of John Marin.

[13] In a special feature on Maggie, the editors of Houston Scene wrote: "Most of her compositions give a cheerful feeling, as if she looks at the world through a prism of flashing lights.

"[15] Kendall Curlee wrote in The Handbook of Texas Online, "Throughout her career, Margaret Dreyer experimented with such styles as Cubism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism; her work was characterized by bold strokes and rich colors and textures.

Exhibited posthumously at the Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston, they were large acrylic stain pieces on unbleached, unsized linen.

About these works, the Houston Chronicle's Ann Holmes wrote: "Maggie's last songs were lyrical, jeweled, maultidimensional, complex, allusive...

But the textures and the colors — fuchsias, confetti greens, orange and yellow of these separate works are perfectly, clearly, Margaret Webb Dreyer getting it all together with her very own kind of inquiry and sophistication.

Along with her husband Martin and son Thorne, she was the center of an extensive art and literary community and was active in liberal politics and the movement against the War in Vietnam.

"[17] In a 2013 feature on "the most influential Houstonians of all time," Houstonia Magazine wrote, "People loved Margaret Webb Dreyer's …mid-century Saturday night salons …where today's celebrated art scene may well have been born, and the guest list glittered with anti-Vietnam activists (Jane Fonda) and renegade filmmakers (Robert Altman).