The Red Wall

Seong Moy

According to Francis Harvey in a 1954 article written for Print: The Magazine for the Graphic Arts, “Moy’s techniques of printmaking represent a considerable advance. By using innovative techniques such as transferring designs painted on transparent celluloid to woodblocks, Mr. Moy was able to retain the immediacy of his image making and the painterly quality that made his work so recognizable. In his later works, Mr. Moy continued his inventive use of materials and techniques, incorporating the collage medium, and experimenting with non-traditional, common materials. He pioneered a technique of printmaking using cardboard known as 'color relief printing'.”

The eminent critic Emily Genauer wrote of Mr. Moy’s art, “It is a language, seemingly abstract, that through its mélange of bright colors and fragmentary shapes as vivid as banners whipping in the wind, communicates concretely what the artist saw and felt… His own work always stems from events and experiences, deriving from past and present, and melting into a unified image.”

A native of China, Seong Moy was born in Canton in 1921. He immigrated to the United States in 1931, settling with his family in St. Paul, Minnesota. While still in his teens, Moy studied at the WPA/FAP school in St. Paul and later with Cameron Booth at the St. Paul School of Art. Moy worked in the Federal Art Project print shop in Minneapolis from 1939 to 1941.

In 1941, he was awarded a scholarship to the Art Students’ League in New York where he studied with Vaclav Vytlacil and that same year he studied at the Hofmann School with Hans Hofmann. He worked at Atelier 17 in New York between 1948 and 1950.

Moy began his teaching career in 1951 with painting classes at the University of Minnesota. Over the years he taught part time at various universities and colleges, including Smith College, Vassar College, Cooper Union, Pratt Graphic Center and the Art Students’ League. Following the lead of Hans Hofmann, he opened the Seong Moy School of Painting and Graphic Arts in Provincetown in 1954 and taught summer courses for twenty years.