Thomas H. Kapsalis

Thomas Harry Kapsalis (May 31, 1925 – July 14, 2022) was a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a leading American abstract painter and sculptor.

Personal life Thomas Harry Kapsalis was born to Adamantia and Harry Kapsalis on May 31, 1925 in Chicago, Illinois. He married Stella (née Manos) Kapsalis around 1956. Prior to being conscripted into the Army, he was halfway through pursuing his Bachelor's degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He received a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship to study with Willi Baumeister in Stuttgart from 1953-1954. He worked as an instructor in painting and drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago starting in 1954, was promoted to Assistant Professor in 1961, and retired in 1975.

His art work was featured in "Chicago and Vicinity" - an annual exhibition that featured work from Artists in Chicago - in 1956, 1960, 1969, and 2016.

Some have called his work that of Modernism. Kapsalis described the style of his work as moving from expressionistic realism to figurative abstraction and finally to non-objective abstraction. He said "I never explain my work in literal terms because I am creating something visual." His abstract paintings are often quite colorful, but for a period he painted without color and only in black and white to protest the Vietnam War.

In 2009, Kapsalis appeared as the main subject of the documentary tryphon: three sounds, produced by the CUENTOS Foundation and premiered at the Brauer Museum.

In 2011, Kapsalis' work - along with that of Ralph Arnold, Vera Klement, Ellen Lanyon and others - was displayed in the Illinois State Museum's exhibit Luminous Ground: Artists With Histories, which was open until January 2013. In 2013, his work was on display at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art. In 2015, his work was again exhibited at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in the exhibit Chicago Connection: Artists from the Post-War Period alongside Seymour Rosofsky, Eleanor Coen, and Arthur Lerner. From January - March 2018, Kapsalis' work put on display by Art Design Chicago in an exhibit titled Thomas H. Kapsalis: Black + White, etc. the Art Institute of Chicago,