Gyorgy Kepes Art

Gyorgy Kepes (1906 - 2001) Untitled Mixed media on canvas 48 x 48 inches Kepes was born in Selyp, Hungary. His younger brother was Imre Kepes, ambassador in Argentina, father of András Kepes, a journalist, documentary filmmaker and author. At age 18, he enrolled at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, where he studied for four years with Istvan Csok, a Hungarian impressionist painter. In the same period, he was also influenced by the socialist avant-garde poet and painter Lajos Kassak, and began to search for means by which he could contribute to the alleviation of social injustice, especially (as he later recalled) "the inhumane conditions of the Hungarian peasantry." Kepes gave up painting temporarily and turned instead to filmmaking. In 1930, he settled in Berlin, where he worked as a publication, exhibition and stage designer. Around this time, he designed the dust jacket for Gestalt psychologist Rudolf Arnheim's famous book, Film als Kunst (Film as Art), one of the first published books on film theory. In Berlin, he was also invited to join the design studio of László Moholy-Nagy, the Hungarian photographer who had taught at the Dessau Bauhaus. When, in 1936, Moholy relocated his design studio to London, Kepes joined him there as well. A fortunate consequence of moving to London was that Kepes found his future wife, a 17-year-old British woman née Juliet Appleby, an artist and illustrator. By chance, he saw her on the street, introduced himself, and soon the two began to date. The following year, when Moholy agreed to become the director of a new art school in Chicago (which Moholy dubbed the New Bauhaus), Kepes was invited to join the faculty and to head a curricular area in Light and Color. Kepes asked Juliet to join him. While teaching at the Institute of Design (or New Bauhaus) from 1937 to 1943, Kepes enlarged and refined his ideas about design theory, form in relation to function, and (his own term) the "education of vision." Kepes was lured to Brooklyn College by Russian-born architect Serge Chermayeff, who had been appointed chair of the Art Department in 1942. There he taught graphic artists such as Saul Bass. In 1944, he published Language of Vision, an influential book about design and design education. Widely used for many years as a college textbook (it had thirteen printings, in four languages), it began by acknowledging Kepes' indebtedness to the Berlin-based Gestalt psychologists, and by asserting that "Visual communication is universal and international; it knows no limits of tongue, vocabulary, or grammar, and it can be perceived by the illiterate as well as by the literate…[The visual arts, as] the optimum forms of the language of vision, are, therefore, an invaluable educational medium". In part, the book was important because it predated three other influential texts on the same subject: Paul Rand, Thoughts on Design (1946), László Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion (1947), and Rudolf Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception (1954). In 1942, Kepes had been one of a number of people (Moholy was another) who were asked by the U.S. Army to offer advice on military and civilian urban camouflage, in the course of which he viewed Chicago from the air. He alluded to this experience in Language of Vision, when he talked about natural camouflage: "The numerous optical devices which nature employs in the animal world to conceal animals from their enemies reveal the workings of this law [i.e., perceptual grouping] of visual organization". In 1947, Kepes accepted an invitation from the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT to initiate a program there in visual design, a division that later became the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (c1968). Some of the Center's early fellows included artists Otto Piene, Panayiotis Vassilakis, Jack Burnham, Wen-Ying Tsai, Stan Vanderbeek, Maryanne Amacher, Joan Brigham, Lowry Burgess, Peter Campus, Muriel Cooper, Douglas Davis, Susan Gamble, Dieter Jung, Piotr Kowalski, Charlotte Moorman, Antoni Muntadas, Yvonne Rainer, Keiko Prince, Alan Sonfist, Aldo Tambellini, Joe Davis, Bill Seaman, Tamiko Thiel, Alejandro Sina, Don Ritter, Luc Courchesne, and Bill Parker. While teaching at MIT (where he remained until his retirement in 1974), Kepes was in contact with a wide assortment of artists, designers, architects and scientists, among them Norbert Wiener, Buckminster Fuller, Rudolf Arnheim, Marcel Breuer, Charles Eames, Erik Erikson...

oil and sand on canvas signed "Gyorgy Kepes / Nature Hieroglyph / 1958" on verso

Sorry for the reflection on the plexi. In the early 1980s, the Polaroid Foundation invited Hungarian-born painter and photographer György Kepes (1906-2001) to use the 20x24 Polaroid camera. The resulting carefully staged compositions summarize many of his artistic concerns, employing such objects as prisms, flowers, and graphic papers to manipulate the effects of light and form. György Kepes 1906-2001 was a Hungarian-born painter, photographer, designer, educator, and art theorist. After emigrating to the U.S. in 1937, he taught design at the New Bauhaus (later the School of Design, then Institute of Design, then Illinois Institute of Design or IIT) in Chicago. In 1967 He founded the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he taught until his retirement in 1974. Kepes was born in Selyp, Hungary. His younger brother was Imre Kepes, ambassador in Argentina, father of András Kepes journalist, documentary filmmaker and author. At age 18, he enrolled at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, where he studied for four years with Istvan Csok, a Hungarian impressionist painter. In the same period, he was also influenced by the socialist avant-garde poet and painter Lajos Kassak. Kepes gave up painting temporarily and turned instead to filmmaking. In 1930, he settled in Berlin, where he worked as a publication, exhibition and stage designer. Around this time, he designed the dust jacket for Gestalt psychologist Rudolf Arnheim's famous book, Film als Kunst (Film as Art), one of the first published books on film theory. In Berlin, he was also invited to join the design studio of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, the Hungarian photographer who had taught at the Dessau Bauhaus. When, in 1936, Moholy relocated his design studio to London, Kepes joined him there as well. Kepes was lured to Brooklyn College by Russian-born architect Serge Chermayeff, who had been appointed chair of the Art Department in 1942. There he taught graphic artists such as Saul Bass. In 1944, he published Language of Vision, an influential book about design and design education. In part, the book was important because it predated three other influential texts on the same subject: Paul Rand, Thoughts on Design (1946), László Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion (1947), and Rudolf Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception (1954). In 1947, Kepes accepted an invitation from the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT to initiate a program there in visual design, a division that later became the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (c1968). Some of the Center's early fellows included artists Otto Piene, Vassilakis Takis, Jack Burnham, Wen-Ying Tsai, Stan Vanderbeek, Maryanne Amacher, Joan Brigham, Lowry Burgess, Peter Campus, Muriel Cooper, Douglas Davis, Susan Gamble, Dieter Jung, Piotr Kowalski, Charlotte Moorman, Antoni Muntadas, Yvonne Rainer, Keiko Prince, Alan Sonfist, Aldo Tambellini, Joe Davis, Bill Seaman, Tamiko Thiel, Alejandro Sina, Don Ritter, Luc Courchesne, and Bill Parker. While teaching at MIT Kepes was in contact with a wide assortment of artists, designers, architects and scientists, among them Norbert Wiener, Buckminster Fuller, Rudolf Arnheim, Marcel Breuer, Charles Eames, Erik Erikson...

Gyorgy Kepes (1906-2002). Glow, 1974. Oil and sand on canvas, 48 x 60 inches; 50 x 62 inches in custom 22K gold leaf float frame. Excellent condition with no damage or conservation. ...

Signed, dated and numbered. Portfolio "Twelve Photographs," No. 13

Gyorgy Kepes (1906-2001). Oil, sand and collage on canvas measures 6 x 8 inches; 10 x 12 inches framed. Painting is in excellent condition with no damage or restoration. Signed lower left. Frame has minor water stain on linen, lower right. Kepes was born in Hungry in 1906. He was not only a painter but also a filmmaker and a writer. Kepes studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest where he studied painting under Istvan Csok during the 1920's. Kepes was invited to join the design studio of Hungarian photographer Laszo Mohonly-Nagy in Berlin. He then followed Mohonly to London in 1936. It was in London that Kepes met his wife, artist and illustrator, Juliet Appleby. In 1937, he emigrated to the United States. Teaching: New Bauhaus in Chicago / late 1937-1943 teaching design Brooklyn College / 1942 teaching graphic art School of Architecture and Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology / 1947 teaching visual design Founder of Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT / 1967-1974 While teaching at MIT, Kepes' art became abstract. This lead him to pursue an art style known as "new scientific imagery." Kepes continued to teach at MIT until his retirement in 1974. Kepes made numerous pieces in connection to lighting. The first programmable lightwall made by an artist in 1949 on the elevation of Radio Shack in Boston; the kinetic lightwall of the KLM headquarters carried out in 1959; New York Times Square's kinetic wall; Cambridge Harvard Square subway station. His lighting artwork is presented in numerous places including Chicago and San Francisco. Solo Exhibitions: 2012 Paintings & Photographs 1940s - 1980s - Alpha Gallery, Boston, MA 2008 The art of the light - MODEM Centre for Modern and Contemporary Arts, Debrecen 1984 Light Graphics - ICP - International Center of Photography, New York City, NY 1978 Kepes at the Henry - Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA 1958...