GENERAL DESCRIPTION
In his early twenties, Zoltan Sepeshy moved from his native Hungary to live with his uncle in Detroit. Though he had undergraduate and graduate degrees in art and art education from the Royal Academy of Art in Budapest, Sepeshy's American career began with a series of manual labor positions. He worked in a lumber yard, barbershop, and eventually an advertising agency, where he put his talents to use as a billboard painter. Eventually Sepeshy secured a teaching position at the Cranbrook Institute (Bloomfield Hills, Michigan) and went on to act as the head of the painting department, resident-artist, director, and finally president.
Sepeshy's work during the 1930s and 1940s adhered to American Regionalist tenets and pulled subject matter from the towns and harbors of Michigan. In 1942 he painted a series of works for Fortune illustrating "The Main Street Front: A Report on an American Community after One Year of War" (December 1942). Similar streetscapes resulted from a 1946 commission to depict the state's architecture and people for Michigan on Canvas, a state-sponsored traveling exhibition. The Whole Town may have originated as part of Sepeshy's 1946 travels through Michigan, but the setting is unidentified. He submitted this painting in 1947 to the annual Paintings of the Year exhibition sponsored by the Pepsi-Cola Company. The company bought the work and featured The Whole Town in its annual calendar.
The scene's appeal results from its familiar subject matter and luminous tempera technique. Along the roadway, a gas station sits in the foreground with the town's businesses receding into the distance. Cars and trucks appear parked on both street-sides, but the view is surprisingly uninhabited; Sepeshy did not include figures of pedestrians or residents. The Whole Town uses linear perspective to emphasize the long expanse of asphalt that links this community to similar towns across the country. The illusion of depth is heightened by the streetlight's decreasing size along the central thoroughfare.
NOTES
Getty form of his name- Zoltan L. Sepeshy
born- February 24 or 25, 1898 Kassa, Hungary- now kozice, Czechoslavakia (see James Houghton, Sepeshy Remembered)
trained- 1915-20?- Budapest, Royal Academy of Art under the aegis of Szinyei Merse Pál, Edui-Illes Aladár, Aghazy, Kernstock Karoly; received MA degrees in art and art education
trained- c. 1920- Vienna, paris, Germany, Italy, France
worked- 1921- NYC
worked- 1921-22, 1924-30 Detroit, moved here after immigrating to NYC; uncle lived in Detroit; jobs included lumber yard, wall painter, sweeping barbershop floors, Walker Outdoor Advertising Co. (sign painter); 1924 got job in Albert Kahn's architectural office; 1926 teacher at Center for Creative Studies, then Detroit School of Applied Art and Wayne State University
worked- Bloomfield Hills, Michigan- 1930-1966 began career at Cranbrook Institute; teacher, head of painting department, resident-artist, Director-1947 (after death of Eliel Saarinen), 1959- President.
worked- 1922-23, 1926- Taos- traveled to New Mexico from Detroit by bus; visited Indian pueblo of Santa Clara; met John Sloan, Walter Ufer, and Ernest Blumneschein
Added exhibition history-
Through the Looking Glass- piction 11317
1947: "Pepsi-Cola Company's Fourth Annual Paintings of the Year," National Academy of Design, New York City, October 1- November 2, 1947; The Rochester Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY, November 21- December 21; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC, January 15- February 22, 1948; The Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH, March 14- April 18, 1948, cat. no. 121 (b/w illustration on back cover)
Reproduced in color on the 1948 Pepsi Cola calendar.
Added Foreign language title- La Ville tout entière (1945)- used by Olivier in Dossier l'Art article
search dates in TMS currently 1916-1950, another TMS report shows search dates as empty. I am entering the date as 1947 based on the date the Pepsi-Cola exhibition opened.
CONSIDER ILL REQUEST IN THE FUTURE-
Florence Davies, Michigan on Canvas: The J. L. Hudson Company Collection, [unknown publisher, 1948?]
Based on the limited search of HathiTrust, the term "Spepeshy" appears in the book on 12 pages. Could be a way to compare The Whole Town to the commissioned series to know if it was made at the same time or depicts a specific location.
Add to TMS as text entry:
This work in tempera painting by an American regionalist painter depicts the modest work-a-day simplicity of a small town, which is nothing more than its Main Street. The gas station, the cars and truck, the dull buildings are silhouetted against the vast cloudy sky of the High Plains. There are small towns like this allover West Texas. Sepeshy catches the almost pathetic emptiness and loneliness of these little towns, crumbling away under the harsh indifference of the prairie sky. The painting is also a neat study in vanishing point perspective: the lines of the roadway and sidewalk converge until they disappear at the end of the street; the buildings overlap and gradually become smaller, suggesting space and depth. The perspective layout is punctuated by the increasingly smaller street lights along the roadway.
Exhibition text (1950.92), DMFA Teacher Packet for Through the Looking Glass, 1981.
Research information not added to TMS:
Murals:
1927- general Motors building, Detroit
1928- Fordson High School, Dearborn, MI- transit theme, 6 panels
1935+- Post office murals for FAP- Lincoln Park, MI; Mashville, IL
1933- one of eight Michigan artists chosen to depict 100 year history of the state for the Chicago Century of Progress exhibition (16 x 8 ft canvas depicting Jean Nicolet)
1938- October 1938, Fortune, series of gouache paintings on the American Steel Industry based on the Inland Steel Plant, Whiting, Indiana
1942- December 1942- Fortune, "The Main Street Front: A Report on an American Community after One Year of War." This series included "Poor Street" which was shown at DMFA Life-Time-Fortune exhibition
1946- JL Htists to paint over 100 paintings for "Michigan on Canvas"- exhibited at State Capitol and then toured
Cranbrook Academy of Art Library- research web page
- Barrie, Dennis. Artists in Michigan, 1900-1976. Detroit: Wayne State University press, 1989: 205-206.
- Carducci, Vincent. "The Inlander Art Collection reveals mainstream Modernism as filtered through local loyalty." The New Art Examiner 22, no. 10 (Summer 1995): 36-39.
- Payne, E.H. "Marine Still Life." Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts 27, no. 4 (1948): 99-100.
- Schmeckebier, Lawrence Eli. Zoltan Sepeshy: Forty Years of His Work. Syracuse, NY: School of Art, Syracuse University, 1966.
- Sepeshy, Zoltan. Tempera Painting. New York and London: American Studio Books, 1946.
- __________. "I Don't Like Labels." Magazine of Art 38 (May 1945): 186-189.
- He listed the labesl applied to his work: Hungarian, Czechoslovak, American, Realist, Romanticist, Naturalist, Cubist, Expressoinist, Abstractionist, and "mere technician" because he preferred to paint in tempera.
- __________. "What Place Art in the Post-War World?" Art Digest 17 (Aug 1943): 17.
- Watson, Ernest W. "Zoltan Sepeshy." American Artist 8, no. 7 (Sept 1944): 8-eoa.
Possible fun fact-
- He listed the labels applied to his work: Hungarian, Czechoslovak, American, Realist, Romanticist, Naturalist, Cubist, Expressoinist, Abstractionist, and "mere technician" because he preferred to paint in tempera. (Zoltan Sepeshy, "I Don't Like Labels" Magazine of Art 38 (May 1945): 186-189.)
Other label text, Dropbox from EAS September 2018, unsure of author or date:
A student of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest and the Fine Arts Academy in Vienna, Zoltan Sepeshy emigrated to the United States from Hungary in 1921. The modernist painter settled in Detroit, where his style was heavily influenced by the Midwestern regionalist landscape. In The Whole Town Sepeshy paints the nucleus of a modest small town—picturesque Main Street, set with a row of streetlights and storefronts. As the title suggests, however, we are seeing the town in its entirety, unoccupied by townsfolk and unbothered by the bustle of city life. Above the otherwise ordinary town, abstracted rays of sunshine fall into organized panels of light as luminous clouds float intermittently.
Throughout his long career Sepeshy actively responded to critics, whose opinions were often split, who received his work as both sophisticated modern abstraction and dull regionalism. He used his writings as a platform to voice his response and justify the quality of his work, detailing his methodical technique, decisive plan and lack of impulse. The superb colorist extended the chromatic and tonal range of tempera painting by applying paint in thin lines, a process which resulted in an impeccably even surface as seen in this painting.
A student of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest and
the Fine Arts Academy in Vienna,
Zoltan Sepeshy emigrated to the United States from Hungary in
1921. The modernist painter
settled in Detroit, where his style was heavily influenced by
the Midwestern regionalist
landscape. In
The Whole Town
Sepeshy paints the nucleus of a modest small town
—
picturesque
Main Street, set with a row of streetlights and storefr
onts. As the title suggests, however, we are
seeing the town in its entirety, unoccupied by townsfolk and unb
othered by the bustle of city life.
Above the otherwise ordinary town, abstracted rays of su
nshine fall into organized panels of
light as luminous clouds float intermittently.
Throughout his long career Sepeshy actively responded to crit
ics, whose opinions were often
split, who received his work as both sophisticated modern
abstraction and dull regionalism. He
used his writings as a platform to voice his response and ju
stify the quality of his work, detailing
his methodical technique, decisive plan and lack of impulse
.
The superb colorist extended the
chromatic and tonal range of tempera painting by applying pa
int in thin lines, a process which
resulted in an impeccably even surface as seen in this pain
ting.
Catalogue essays
Artist/designers
Zoltan Sepeshy (American, born Hungary, 1898-1974)
Cultures
Geography
place of origin- Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; Cranbrook Academy of Art: ULAN: 500125892; Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum: ULAN: 500304610
place depicted- Michigan (?)
Process/materials
egg tempera
masonite
Historical periods
1947
Individuals
Subject terms
main street
street lighting units
sunlight
sidewalk
trees
glass
windows
buildings
gas pumps
service station
automobiles
signs
concrete blocks
clouds
sky
linear perspective
geometric
lines (artistic)
lines (geometric)
chimneys
awnings
pickup truck
fire hydrant
linear perspective
orthoganal
vanishing point
cityscape
Regionalist
rural areas
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
From 1947: Pepsi-Cola Company, purchased from the "Pepsi-Cola Company's Fourth Annual Exhibition, Paintings of the Year" (October 1, 1947 to April 18, 1948)
n.d.: Peggy Louise Jones, DMN, purchased from the Pepsi-Cola Collection sale [1]
From 1950: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas Art Association purchase, through Midtown Galleries, NY [2]
[1] This line of provenance comes from documentation in the Collections Records Object File. Dates of ownership not included.
[2] The name of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, founded in 1933, was changed to the Dallas Museum of Art in 1983.
AUDIO ASSETS
VIDEO ASSETS
IMAGE ASSETS
WEB RESOURCES
- Zoltan Sepeshy Remembered~Read more about this artist in an exhibition catalogue essay by James Houghton for the Muskegon Museum of Art (2002).
- Zoltan Sepeshy for Fortune magazine~Check out two of Sepeshy's commissioned series available on the Visual Telling of Stories website ("What is a Steel Price?" 1938 and "The Main Street Front" 1940).
ARCHIVAL RESOURCES
FUN FACTS
Another work in the DMA collection, Francis Guy's Winter Scene in Brooklyn (2008.23.McD), presents an equally unpopulated view of a community's central road.
TEACHING IDEAS
RULES
Apply to objects where number equals 1950.92
Category
rules_operator
AND
General Description
In his early twenties, Zoltan Sepeshy moved from his native Hungary to live with his uncle in Detroit. Though he had undergraduate and graduate degrees in art and art education from the Royal Academy of Art in Budapest, Sepeshy's American career began with a series of manual labor positions. He worked in a lumber yard, barbershop, and eventually an advertising agency, where he put his talents to use as a billboard painter. Eventually Sepeshy secured a teaching position at the Cranbrook Institute (Bloomfield Hills, Michigan) and went on to act as the head of the painting department, resident-artist, director, and finally president.
Sepeshy's work during the 1930s and 1940s adhered to American Regionalist tenets and pulled subject matter from the towns and harbors of Michigan. In 1942 he painted a series of works for Fortune illustrating "The Main Street Front: A Report on an American Community after One Year of War" (December 1942). Similar streetscapes resulted from a 1946 commission to depict the state's architecture and people for Michigan on Canvas, a state-sponsored traveling exhibition. The Whole Town may have originated as part of Sepeshy's 1946 travels through Michigan, but the setting is unidentified. He submitted this painting in 1947 to the annual Paintings of the Year exhibition sponsored by the Pepsi-Cola Company. The company bought the work and featured The Whole Town in its annual calendar.
The scene's appeal results from its familiar subject matter and luminous tempera technique. Along the roadway, a gas station sits in the foreground with the town's businesses receding into the distance. Cars and trucks appear parked on both street-sides, but the view is surprisingly uninhabited; Sepeshy did not include figures of pedestrians or residents. The Whole Town uses linear perspective to emphasize the long expanse of asphalt that links this community to similar towns across the country. The illusion of depth is heightened by the streetlight's decreasing size along the central thoroughfare.
Fun Facts
Another work in the DMA collection, Francis Guy's Winter Scene in Brooklyn (2008.23.McD), presents an equally unpopulated view of a community's central road.
Archival Resources
Web Resources
- Zoltan Sepeshy Remembered~Read more about this artist in an exhibition catalogue essay by James Houghton for the Muskegon Museum of Art (2002).
- Zoltan Sepeshy for Fortune magazine~Check out two of Sepeshy's commissioned series available on the Visual Telling of Stories website ("What is a Steel Price?" 1938 and "The Main Street Front" 1940).
Notes
Getty form of his name- Zoltan L. Sepeshy
born- February 24 or 25, 1898 Kassa, Hungary- now kozice, Czechoslavakia (see James Houghton, Sepeshy Remembered)
trained- 1915-20?- Budapest, Royal Academy of Art under the aegis of Szinyei Merse Pál, Edui-Illes Aladár, Aghazy, Kernstock Karoly; received MA degrees in art and art education
trained- c. 1920- Vienna, paris, Germany, Italy, France
worked- 1921- NYC
worked- 1921-22, 1924-30 Detroit, moved here after immigrating to NYC; uncle lived in Detroit; jobs included lumber yard, wall painter, sweeping barbershop floors, Walker Outdoor Advertising Co. (sign painter); 1924 got job in Albert Kahn's architectural office; 1926 teacher at Center for Creative Studies, then Detroit School of Applied Art and Wayne State University
worked- Bloomfield Hills, Michigan- 1930-1966 began career at Cranbrook Institute; teacher, head of painting department, resident-artist, Director-1947 (after death of Eliel Saarinen), 1959- President.
worked- 1922-23, 1926- Taos- traveled to New Mexico from Detroit by bus; visited Indian pueblo of Santa Clara; met John Sloan, Walter Ufer, and Ernest Blumneschein
Added exhibition history-
Through the Looking Glass- piction 11317
1947: "Pepsi-Cola Company's Fourth Annual Paintings of the Year," National Academy of Design, New York City, October 1- November 2, 1947; The Rochester Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY, November 21- December 21; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC, January 15- February 22, 1948; The Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH, March 14- April 18, 1948, cat. no. 121 (b/w illustration on back cover)
Reproduced in color on the 1948 Pepsi Cola calendar.
Added Foreign language title- La Ville tout entière (1945)- used by Olivier in Dossier l'Art article
search dates in TMS currently 1916-1950, another TMS report shows search dates as empty. I am entering the date as 1947 based on the date the Pepsi-Cola exhibition opened.
CONSIDER ILL REQUEST IN THE FUTURE-
Florence Davies, Michigan on Canvas: The J. L. Hudson Company Collection, [unknown publisher, 1948?]
Based on the limited search of HathiTrust, the term "Spepeshy" appears in the book on 12 pages. Could be a way to compare The Whole Town to the commissioned series to know if it was made at the same time or depicts a specific location.
Add to TMS as text entry:
This work in tempera painting by an American regionalist painter depicts the modest work-a-day simplicity of a small town, which is nothing more than its Main Street. The gas station, the cars and truck, the dull buildings are silhouetted against the vast cloudy sky of the High Plains. There are small towns like this allover West Texas. Sepeshy catches the almost pathetic emptiness and loneliness of these little towns, crumbling away under the harsh indifference of the prairie sky. The painting is also a neat study in vanishing point perspective: the lines of the roadway and sidewalk converge until they disappear at the end of the street; the buildings overlap and gradually become smaller, suggesting space and depth. The perspective layout is punctuated by the increasingly smaller street lights along the roadway.
Exhibition text (1950.92), DMFA Teacher Packet for Through the Looking Glass, 1981.
Research information not added to TMS:
Murals:
1927- general Motors building, Detroit
1928- Fordson High School, Dearborn, MI- transit theme, 6 panels
1935+- Post office murals for FAP- Lincoln Park, MI; Mashville, IL
1933- one of eight Michigan artists chosen to depict 100 year history of the state for the Chicago Century of Progress exhibition (16 x 8 ft canvas depicting Jean Nicolet)
1938- October 1938, Fortune, series of gouache paintings on the American Steel Industry based on the Inland Steel Plant, Whiting, Indiana
1942- December 1942- Fortune, "The Main Street Front: A Report on an American Community after One Year of War." This series included "Poor Street" which was shown at DMFA Life-Time-Fortune exhibition
1946- JL Htists to paint over 100 paintings for "Michigan on Canvas"- exhibited at State Capitol and then toured
Cranbrook Academy of Art Library- research web page
- Barrie, Dennis. Artists in Michigan, 1900-1976. Detroit: Wayne State University press, 1989: 205-206.
- Carducci, Vincent. "The Inlander Art Collection reveals mainstream Modernism as filtered through local loyalty." The New Art Examiner 22, no. 10 (Summer 1995): 36-39.
- Payne, E.H. "Marine Still Life." Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts 27, no. 4 (1948): 99-100.
- Schmeckebier, Lawrence Eli. Zoltan Sepeshy: Forty Years of His Work. Syracuse, NY: School of Art, Syracuse University, 1966.
- Sepeshy, Zoltan. Tempera Painting. New York and London: American Studio Books, 1946.
- __________. "I Don't Like Labels." Magazine of Art 38 (May 1945): 186-189.
- He listed the labesl applied to his work: Hungarian, Czechoslovak, American, Realist, Romanticist, Naturalist, Cubist, Expressoinist, Abstractionist, and "mere technician" because he preferred to paint in tempera.
- __________. "What Place Art in the Post-War World?" Art Digest 17 (Aug 1943): 17.
- Watson, Ernest W. "Zoltan Sepeshy." American Artist 8, no. 7 (Sept 1944): 8-eoa.
Possible fun fact-
- He listed the labels applied to his work: Hungarian, Czechoslovak, American, Realist, Romanticist, Naturalist, Cubist, Expressoinist, Abstractionist, and "mere technician" because he preferred to paint in tempera. (Zoltan Sepeshy, "I Don't Like Labels" Magazine of Art 38 (May 1945): 186-189.)
Other label text, Dropbox from EAS September 2018, unsure of author or date:
A student of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest and the Fine Arts Academy in Vienna, Zoltan Sepeshy emigrated to the United States from Hungary in 1921. The modernist painter settled in Detroit, where his style was heavily influenced by the Midwestern regionalist landscape. In The Whole Town Sepeshy paints the nucleus of a modest small town—picturesque Main Street, set with a row of streetlights and storefronts. As the title suggests, however, we are seeing the town in its entirety, unoccupied by townsfolk and unbothered by the bustle of city life. Above the otherwise ordinary town, abstracted rays of sunshine fall into organized panels of light as luminous clouds float intermittently.
Throughout his long career Sepeshy actively responded to critics, whose opinions were often split, who received his work as both sophisticated modern abstraction and dull regionalism. He used his writings as a platform to voice his response and justify the quality of his work, detailing his methodical technique, decisive plan and lack of impulse. The superb colorist extended the chromatic and tonal range of tempera painting by applying paint in thin lines, a process which resulted in an impeccably even surface as seen in this painting.
A student of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest and
the Fine Arts Academy in Vienna,
Zoltan Sepeshy emigrated to the United States from Hungary in
1921. The modernist painter
settled in Detroit, where his style was heavily influenced by
the Midwestern regionalist
landscape. In
The Whole Town
Sepeshy paints the nucleus of a modest small town
—
picturesque
Main Street, set with a row of streetlights and storefr
onts. As the title suggests, however, we are
seeing the town in its entirety, unoccupied by townsfolk and unb
othered by the bustle of city life.
Above the otherwise ordinary town, abstracted rays of su
nshine fall into organized panels of
light as luminous clouds float intermittently.
Throughout his long career Sepeshy actively responded to crit
ics, whose opinions were often
split, who received his work as both sophisticated modern
abstraction and dull regionalism. He
used his writings as a platform to voice his response and ju
stify the quality of his work, detailing
his methodical technique, decisive plan and lack of impulse
.
The superb colorist extended the
chromatic and tonal range of tempera painting by applying pa
int in thin lines, a process which
resulted in an impeccably even surface as seen in this pain
ting.
Catalogue essays
Artist/designers
Zoltan Sepeshy (American, born Hungary, 1898-1974)
Cultures
Geography
place of origin- Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; Cranbrook Academy of Art: ULAN: 500125892; Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum: ULAN: 500304610
place depicted- Michigan (?)
Process/materials
egg tempera
masonite
Historical periods
1947
Individuals
Subject terms
main street
street lighting units
sunlight
sidewalk
trees
glass
windows
buildings
gas pumps
service station
automobiles
signs
concrete blocks
clouds
sky
linear perspective
geometric
lines (artistic)
lines (geometric)
chimneys
awnings
pickup truck
fire hydrant
linear perspective
orthoganal
vanishing point
cityscape
Regionalist
rural areas
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
From 1947: Pepsi-Cola Company, purchased from the "Pepsi-Cola Company's Fourth Annual Exhibition, Paintings of the Year" (October 1, 1947 to April 18, 1948)
n.d.: Peggy Louise Jones, DMN, purchased from the Pepsi-Cola Collection sale [1]
From 1950: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas Art Association purchase, through Midtown Galleries, NY [2]
[1] This line of provenance comes from documentation in the Collections Records Object File. Dates of ownership not included.
[2] The name of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, founded in 1933, was changed to the Dallas Museum of Art in 1983.
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VIDEO ASSETS
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Objects
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