Seong Moy

Seong Moy (Chinese: 梅祥) (April 12, 1921 – June 9, 2013)  was an American painter and printmaker.  Moy was born in a small town outside of Canton, China; he emigrated to the United States at the age of 10 in 1931, and moved to St. Paul, Minnesota.  During this time, Moy attended school during the day, and trained in his uncle's restaurant as an assistant chef when not in school.  In 1934, Moy was introduced to art classes at the Federal Art Project School through a friend.  For the next few years, Moy studied art first at the Federal Art Project, and later at the St. Paul School of Art and the WPA Graphic Workshop at the Walker Art Center.

In 1941 he moved to New York City to study at the Art Students League and the Hoffman School of Art.  This lasted until the fall of 1942, when he enlisted with the U.S. Army Air Force, serving in the China-India-Burma Theater as an aerial reconnaissance photographer.

In 1955 Moy won a Guggenheim Fellowship.  His woodcuts from this time are notable in their use of subject matter from Chinese classics, combined with the formal techniques of Abstract Expressionism.  For example, his woodcut Inscription of T'Chao Pae #II (1952) explores the potential of archaic Chinese calligraphy, illustrating the artist's aim, in his own words, to "recreate in the abstract idiom of contemporary time some of the ideas of ancient Chinese art forms."

His work can be found in the permanent collections of a number of museums in the United States, including the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian.

References
 Chang, Gordon, ed. Asian American Art: A History, 1850-1970, Stanford University Press, 2008, 204-205.
 Hallmark, Kara Kelley, Encyclopedia of Asian American Artists, Greenwood Press, 2007, 131-134.
 Wechsler, Jeffrey, ed. Asian Traditions Modern Expressions, Harry N. Abrams Inc, 1997.

Footnotes

Chang, Gordon, ed. Asian American Art: A History, 1850-1970, Stanford University Press, 2008, 204-205.

External links
 The Seong Moy Online Catalog Raisonné
 An interview of Seong Moy conducted 1971 Jan. 18-28, by Paul Cummings, for the Archives of American Art
 In October, 2018, there are photos, and auction sale prices for 97 works by Seong Moy at liveauctioneers.com. (A free login account is required to see sale prices.)

Category:1921 births
Category:Abstract expressionist artists
Category:20th-century American painters
Category:American male painters
Category:21st-century American painters
Category:American printmakers
Category:Artists from Guangzhou
Category:Artists from New York (state)
Category:Chinese emigrants to the United States
Category:Guggenheim Fellows
Category:2013 deaths
Category:Artists from Saint Paul, Minnesota
Category:United States Army Air Forces personnel
Category:American people of Cantonese descent
Category:Pre-1949 Republic of China emigrants to the United States