Anthony Schepis

(Cleveland, Ohio, 1927 - )

American

Anthony Schepis was born in Cleveland and enjoyed a long career as a teacher and painter in Northeast Ohio. He studied at the Cooper School of Art (which operated in Cleveland but no longer exists), receiving a Diploma in 1951, and then attended the Cleveland Institute of Art, where he earned a Certificate in 1955. Schepis then returned to the Cooper School as an instructor from 1957–1977 and eventually bolstered his own education with an MFA from Kent State University, completed in 1976. The artist then returned to his other early alma mater, serving as Professor of Drawing and Painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art from 1979–1997 and receiving the title of Professor Emeritus in 1999. Schepis determined the directions of his own art making early on, during his time at the Cooper School. He studied with Leslie W. Lintelman, a visiting artist from the Hartford Art School, who emphasized the underpainting and glazing procedures employed by the old masters. Schepis thus found his technical precedents in the Italian Renaissance, while drawings subject matter from more modern movements including Magic Realism and the Italian Pittura Metafisica, as exemplified by Giorgio de Chirico. Schepis earned a variety of honors for his work, including sixteen appearances in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s annual May Show, punctuated by the exhibition’s First Prize in Painting in 1988. His work was also featured in ten annual juried exhibitions at the Butler Institute of American art, where he won a purchase prize in 1974. An additional purchase prize came in the Akron Art Museum’s own annual juried show in 1970. additionally, Schepis received an Ohio Arts Council Individual Fellowship Grant Award in 1980. After establishing himself in Northeast Ohio, Schepis went on to exhibit extensively in the Midwest, Northeast, and mid-Atlantic regions, ultimately showing his work in sixteen states.

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