ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONIST PAINTINGS, 1956–1976

This catalogue was published by the Estonian House Art Committee in conjunction with the exhibition Peeter Sepp: Colour My World, Abstract Expressionist Paintings, 1956–1976 Estonian House, 958 Broadview Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada March 26 – April 17, 2016 Curated by Eda Sepp, art historian, and Deeter Hastenteufel, artist

Design by Uno Ramat Photography by Peeter Põldre Edited by Tom Sepp and Anita Genua Copy-edited by Martha Campbell

The catalogue has been funded by a generous donation from the Estonian Studies Centre, Tartu College

Other donations from: the Republic of Estonia, Ministry of Culture; Estonian Arts Centre; Estonian Credit Union, Toronto; EstDocs Documentary Film Festival Toronto

We extend our gratitude to the Estonian Studies Centre

at Tartu College for their generous funding of this

catalogue. In addition the exhibition has been made

possible by liberal donations from the Republic of

Estonia, Ministry of Culture; the Estonian Arts Centre;

and the Estonian Credit Union in Toronto. The accom-

panying exhibit of Peeter’s work would not be possible

without the vision and dedication of the Toronto

Estonian House, and most importantly the Estonian

House Art Committee.

Dr. Peeter Põldre has kindly volunteered his time

to drive to Flesherton, Ontario, to photograph the

paintings; for this we are grateful. Uno Ramat has been

generous with advice, promotional ideas, design and

much more. Kristi Sau Doughty has provided much help

and advice in addition to her role as treasurer. We thank

Tom Sepp and Anita Genua for editing the texts and

Martha Campbell for being copy editor.

The artist Deeter Hastenteufel, as a true friend of

Peeter Sepp, has stored all the paintings for many years,

organized the first exhibition with a catalogue of 10

copies and transported the paintings from Flesherton

to Toronto with help from artist Nancy Simard. The

exhibition would not be possible without their help, in

addition to Deeter’s role as co-curator.

Many thanks also to Piret Noorhani, Jaan Roos, Maie

Ilves, Ingrid Sepp Jaenes, Aivar Jaenes, Sahira Sepp,

Acknowledgements

Anita Genua and all the volunteers, especially to Peeter

Sepp’s widow Anu Sepp who owns the paintings.

Organizing the exhibition and writing the catalogue

have been exciting experiences for me. In addition to

digging up information about the birth of abstraction in

Canada, I have read 12 years of The Varsity, University

of Toronto’s student newspaper, which at the time

when Peeter Sepp attended the School of Architecture

was of considerable importance culturally in Canada.

For instance, Peter Gzowski was editor of The Varsity

when Peeter wrote his first article “P.S. on Jazz.” Many

other cultural front-runners received their beginning

at The Varsity. Thinking about the Estonian diaspora

experience, and Peeter Sepp’s far-reaching influence,

I feel that his work should receive even more attention in

the future. ■

— Eda Sepp

In the winter of 1951 Peeter Sepp arrived in Toronto

as an immigrant from Sweden, where the family had

spent six years, after fleeing Estonia in the wake of

the Soviet occupation of 1944. At the young age of 15

Peeter had to begin a new life with a new language and

friends for the second time. His arrival in 1950s’ Toronto,

after a voyage across the ocean and a long train ride

from Halifax, must have been a bleak experience for

him, after cosmopolitan Stockholm with its galleries,

theatres and concert halls.

Many new immigrants found solace by turning

inward to their own diasporas, but Peeter, as a mercurial

optimist, was firmly active in Canadian society too. As

a student at Central Technical School, he was chosen

to be a representative for Simpson’s department

store, where the first exhibition of abstract paintings

in Toronto was held in 1953 in the furniture department

and display windows, called “Abstracts at Home.” This

may have been Peeter’s first encounter with real New

York-style abstract expressionist paintings, especially

the work of William Ronald and Harold Town, whose art

he came to admire. As a youngster he had always been

keenly interested in art to the extent that he had private

access, after-hours, to the whole art department at

Humberside Collegiate Institute in Toronto.

Peeter’s intellectual interests, however, began much

earlier. His closest role model already in Stockholm

was his brother Reino, nine years older, whose circle of

friends included most of the avant-garde Estonian intel-

lectuals in Sweden at the time. A close friend of Reino,

when Peeter was still in public school, was Ilmar Laaban

(1921–2000), Estonia’s first Surrealist poet, jazz pianist,

art critic, producer of sound poetry, with connections

all over Europe. Through Laaban’s influence Peeter

received an interest in avant-garde movements beyond

his age, as well as a keen interest in jazz music.

It is not known when Peeter Sepp entered the

School of Architecture at the University of Toronto, but

his first article “P.S. on Jazz” appeared in the student

newspaper on December 13, 1956.1 This started his

close association with The Varsity, where his column

reviewing jazz records and discussing jazz events in

Toronto, appeared during the following years. Many

of the newest art exhibitions as well as the openings

of new avant-garde galleries were discussed in The

Varsity. Sepp’s first large-scale abstract expressionist

painting in mixed media on masonite, Mandamus, is

dated 1956. He designed posters and publications,

some for The Coffee House restaurant, designed

issues of The Varsity, and was a member of the Hart

House Music Committee.2 His main interests at the

time were visual art and jazz music, but he participated

actively in events of the Estonian diaspora, designing

publications and inspiring younger members of the

Peeter Sepp: the Abstract Expressionist Period

Association of Estonian Students at the University

of Toronto. At the same time he continued painting

abstractions throughout the ’50s; many are now in

private collections.

The collection of paintings at this exhibition does not

reflect Peeter Sepp’s whole development. They make

up what was left when Peeter had to move from his

Broadview Avenue studio. He transported the paintings

to Deeter Hastenteufel’s studio in Flesherton, Ontario,

and promised to retrieve them later. However, he died

suddenly and prematurely in Estonia in 2007. The

paintings have been in storage until now.

In the spring of 2015, perhaps to commemorate

Peeter Sepp’s 80th birthday, his friend and fellow

artist, Deeter Hastenteufel, organized a retrospective

exhibition at the Press Gallery in Collingwood, Ontario,

of all 28 of Sepp’s paintings in his collection. He photo-

graphed the paintings and produced a catalogue of

10 copies with the works titled and in chronological

order. Peeter had dated and named the paintings

(probably using a Latin dictionary) before moving them

to Flesherton. The catalogue by Deeter Hastenteufel

and the exhibition in Collingwood have been valuable

sources for my present work. I saw the excellent

exhibition and realized that it could be the last and

probably only time when such a body of Sepp’s work,

representing his whole abstract expressionist period

from beginning to end, would be shown together. This

inspired me to organize the present exhibition at the

Estonian House in Toronto to let the members of

the local Estonian diaspora view the exhibition and

Canadian art specialists evaluate the works against

what was done in Toronto from the middle ’50s to

about 1976. Peeter Sepp was perhaps the only artist

in the Estonian diaspora in Canada whose works were

created at the same time and were equal in quality to

what was produced in Ontario, one of the three main

centres of the birth of post-Second World War abstract

art in Canada.

In an interview in 1977 Sepp claimed that during the

late 1950s he “frequented openings of art shows at

the newer experimental Toronto galleries and admired

the juicy, strong, bold colours of Bill Ronald, the art of

Graham Coughtry, Michael Snow and the early works

of Harold Town, to name a few.” 3 His familiarity with the

Toronto art scene was probably a factor for his getting

the position of Visual Arts Officer at the Ontario Arts

Council in 1970.

During the early 1950s, Toronto was still dominated

by academic attitudes formed by the realist styles of

the Group of Seven from the 1920s and the Canadian

Group of Painters from the 1930s. There were no

avenues for the younger generation of artists, who

were experimenting with newer styles, to show their

modernist works, and no galleries that would support

them. The very first group of artists, Painters Eleven,

to paint abstract works was formed in 1953.4 In an

interview in 1977, Peeter Sepp singled out two artists

of this group, Harold Town and William Ronald, whose

work he had admired and that inspired him. The first

exhibitions in Toronto by the Painters Eleven were

held at the Roberts Gallery in 1954 and 1955. Later

several artists of the group, either singly or together,

had exhibits at the Hart House Gallery of the University

of Toronto while Sepp was a student at the university.

These and events at other new avant-garde galleries

were often discussed in The Varsity where Peeter Sepp

was then writing articles on jazz.

Coughtry and Snow, whom Peeter mentioned in

the interview, had their first two-man show at the Hart

House Gallery during January 1955. The exhibition

created a scandal when the then mayor of Toronto,

Nathan Phillips, publicly accused Graham Coughtry

of showing obscene works. Coughtry exhibited nude

figures within abstractions, which were to be his later

trademarks. The Varsity was critical of the mayor’s

comments and quoted Coughtry’s answer: “To me

there is nothing ‘dirty’ in this painting. I think the human

body is a beautiful thing.”5 Coughtry may have inspired

Peeter Sepp to use abstracted human forms in erotic

poses several times in his paintings during the ’70s.

Three examples at the present exhibition are Muskoka,

Quo Vadis and Lindanisa.

Both Snow and Coughtry were expert jazz musicians

and hence important role models for Peeter Sepp, who

was mainly known as jazz critic at The Varsity during the

’50s. Sepp has said that at the time, when he was jazz

critic, he discussed improvisation and jazz expression

with musicians and composers, and jazz music

continued to be a constant companion to him, and

inspiration for his abstract canvases. Jazz was an inspir-

ation for many Canadian and American abstract artists

at the time, but Michael Snow’s statement made in 1955

and published in The Varsity in connection with the Hart

House exhibition, warrants to be to be quoted here:

My jazz interests are related to my painting, not

in the end result, but in the procedure of working

out a painting. In both one starts with a theme and

through improvisation and organization one places

his personal stamp on the work. Although the

process is free from rules, after it is born, I expect it

to be a statement, something one can stand on, not

just a helter-skelter salt and pepper effect… actually

all I want to do is present some kind of moving

image using all the contents of painting, colour,

line, texture, form. It must end up being an object

which rewards, invites, provokes contemplation,

awareness… A painting is a small experience in

Peeter Sepp: the Abstract Expressionist Period

feeling and thinking, that is, living. It can be gay, sad,

evil, sexy, soothing, but in that it is, it must be human.

Like a person, there are many facets of its person-

ality that are provocatively hidden.6

This statement also applies to all Peeter Sepp’s

abstract expressionist paintings. Jazz music always

accompanied his painting. He didn’t copy other artists

or external objects. His inspiration came from within,

from his unconscious feelings, which received their

colour and form by listening to jazz music. Although

the idea of abstraction in art as being derived from the

unconscious had its ultimate roots in Surrealism, by the

1950s it was common knowledge and was discussed

widely in art circles everywhere. A more direct source

for Sepp, however, could have been the Surrealist friend

of his brother, Ilmar Laaban, in Sweden.

The large, monumental, organic colour forms of

Peeter Sepp’s canvases have been created with

sweeping, powerful brush strokes, resulting in dynamic

compositions, which seem to have surged forth from

the unconsciousness. A dynamic, liberating optimism

characterizes all his art from 1956 to the end of the ’70s.

Sepp used large, flat fields of colour, often with thinly

applied liquid paint, close to the picture plane and with

shallow depth, which is related to the American theor-

ist-critic Clement Greenberg’s term “post-painterly

abstraction” and is characteristic of abstract expres-

sionism of the time. The loose, energetic brush strokes

with drips and splashes, experimentation with new

materials in paint and canvas, characterize Peeter

Sepp’s abstract expressionist period and tie him to the

whole abstract movement as discussed by Denise

Leclerc.7 His paintings are large in size, he often used

masonite instead of stretched canvases, applied

paint with large house-paint brushes which left visible

strokes. Paint was sometimes poured directly on the

canvas or squeezed from the tube, allowed to drip

and leave visible marks and patterns. For added effect

pallette knives, sticks, any sharp or flat objects were

used in addition to brushes. In Leclerc’s words, this all

changed the artists’ body movements from the wrist to

the forearm and created different results in their works

during the abstract expressionist period.

For anybody interested in what happened in avant-

garde art in Toronto between 1955 and 1991, Avrom

Isaacs’ gallery is an important source. His Greenwich

Gallery (later called Isaacs Gallery) was initially opened

in 1955 and was the first to represent younger abstract

expressionist artists, like Coughtry and Snow. Isaacs’

gallery was often discussed in The Varsity. Besides

paintings Isaacs also hosted poetry readings, experi-

mental music performances and film screenings at

the gallery. As a student of architecture, with intense

interest in art and music, Peeter Sepp was hungrily

absorbing new experimental aspects of the Toronto art

scene. He visited the new galleries regularly and also

mapped them out to me when I began my studies of art

history at the University of Toronto during the 1960s. He

singled out Isaacs Gallery, then already on Yonge Street,

as being the most interesting and innovative.

Av Isaacs was always friendly and discussed his

shows and recent art trends. During the ’60s, after

discussing one of his exhibitions, he asked me if I, with

the surname Sepp (Smith in Estonian), was related to

Peeter Sepp. He said he had been interested in Peeter’s

art and would have liked to exhibit his paintings at the

gallery, but unfortunately Peeter never painted enough

for a show. This was Peeter’s tragedy as a painter. He

was too busy doing many different things, including

being an active member of the Estonian diaspora.

In 1970 Peeter Sepp began his position at the Ontario

Arts Council as Visual Arts Officer, where he developed

grant programs to assist visual arts organizations and

individual artists throughout Ontario. In this context

his name became known throughout art circles as an

organizer who was always willing to help. While there he

created a special project called artario 72, where a kit of

20 art multiples by well-known Ontario artists — prints

and sculptures — was published in an edition of 500,

complete with pop-up display stands, study guides

and multiple-order catalogues, to be distributed in art

galleries, schools, libraries, government offices, jails and

homes, and later sold for less than $15 each. This was

his first project of democratization of art and “art for the

people” which was to occupy his interests throughout

his life. The idea was to make art available to the general

public as cheaply as possible, and to teach the public

that good art need not be expensive and unavailable.

Another similar project was Edition 1.

Very important for Peeter Sepp’s development were

the ideas of John Cage and Alfred Korzybski’s semantic

theories.8 John Cage’s writings, especially The

Indeterminacy Lectures, influenced him considerably.

Democratization of art, freedom of concepts, washing

away preconceptions and breaking away from labels

were, according to Sepp, derived from John Cage. In his

theory of general semantics, Alfred Korzybski says the

meaning of words (or other symbols) is not in the words,

but in our semantic reactions.9 The word as a semantic

symbol is hence not the same as what it is trying to

symbolize and ultimately there is not a single or correct

way to express something like an unconscious feeling

or idea that has not been verbalized yet. Abstract

painters like to express inner non-verbalized thoughts

in colours and forms rather than words, and the viewer,

by looking at the painting, may grasp a feeling from the

work. For Korzybski every way of abstracting produces

its own kind of truth. Sepp said that the ideas of John

Peeter Sepp: the Abstract Expressionist Period

Cage and Alfred Korzybski have helped to free him

from “restrictions of preconceptions” and resulted in “a

compulsion to create on the edge of label-making with

visual forms and ideas.”

Peeter Sepp’s involvement with abstract expres-

sionism ended in 1976. His next period began in 1977

with an exhibition of drawings called Alchemy to the

People, an Exhibition of Post-Formalist ‘Cartoons’ at the

Northern Branch library on Orchard View Boulevard.

The cartoons featured a character with round face, an

optimistic smile and phantom-like spectacles, wearing

a striped shirt, but no pants, and walking, standing,

thinking, talking. The similarity of the cartoon figures

with Peeter Sepp himself produced an autobio-

graphical aspect to the exhibition. He has later referred

to himself as “the cartoonist-philosopher” and by calling

the style “Post-Formalist,” thus distanced himself from

what he called “Clement Greenberg’s restrictive term

post-painterly abstraction.”

Peeter Sepp exhibited his paintings at group shows

in the Estonian diaspora, but before the 1980s, during

his abstract expressionist period, he never exhibited

them in Toronto galleries. Therefore his works were

not widely known in the local art scene. He participated

in many Estonian activities as an organizer, adviser,

activist and generator of ideas. After the 1980s he was

involved with films, improvisational telecommunications

of music, media art and Finno-Ugric culture. The 28

paintings stored in Deeter Hastenteufel’s studio are all

that remains of his abstract expressionist period, and

show him as a partner, both artistically and time-wise,

with the birth of abstract expressionism in Canada.

The present article is only a short introduction to

Peeter Sepp’s development as a painter of abstract

works between 1956 and 1976, and represents a

limited period of his output. This article and the present

exhibition were inspired by the body of work that

Deeter Hastenteufel safeguarded and the exhibition he

organized at the Press Gallery in Collingwood in April

2015. Peeter Sepp’s documents are now stored in the

archives of Estonian Studies Centre at Tartu College

in Toronto. ■

— Eda Sepp1. The first “P.S. on Jazz” appeared in The Varsity on December 1956. I would like to thank Zoe Weber of the University of Toronto Archives who directed me to The Varsity archives. In 1956–57 Peter Gzowski was editor of The Varsity.2. See “Peeter Sepp,” in Profiles, Estonian Architects in Canada, pp. 142–146.3. Interview with Eda Sepp in September 1977.4. See Burnett, David and Schiff, Marilyn. Contemporary Canadian Art. Toronto, 1983, pp. 42–43; and Leclerc, Denise. The Crisis of Abstraction in Canada: The 1950s. National Gallery of Canada. Ottawa, 1993, pp. 57–62.5. See The Varsity, Jan. 10, 1955.6. Griegeroff, Alex K. The Varsity, Jan. 11, 1955, pp. 1 and 4.7. Leclerc. op. cit. pg. 37.8. Eda Sepp, interview, op. cit.9. Quoted in S. I. Hayakawa. Symbol, Status and Personality. New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. 1958. Peeter Sepp gave me this book with his dedicatory drawing when I was interviewing him in 1977. (Hayakawa is a student of Korzybski’s general semantics.)

PAINTINGS

Mandamus (We Command). 1956.

Mixed media on masonite, 121.9 × 91.4 cm

Delectare. 1960. Mixed media on canvas. 96.5 × 121.9 cm

Guadere. 1964. Mixed media on masonite. 81.3 × 121.9 cm

Gestura. 1966. Mixed media on masonite. 96.5 × 121.9 cm

Gemini. 1966. Mixed media on

masonite, 121.9 × 96.5 cm

Duplicatus. 1966. Mixed media on masonite, 121.9 × 96.5 cm

Trillix. 1967. Mixed media on masonite, 142.2 × 121.9 cm

Sanctus. 1967. Mixed media on masonite,

121.9 × 81.3 cm

Sanctus #II. 1967. Mixed media on masonite,

121.9 × 81.3 cm

Mana. 1967. Mixed media on masonite. 81.9 × 121.9 cm

Telesma. 1970. Mixed media on masonite. 81.9 × 121.9 cm

Gemini Blue. 1970.

Acrylic on canvas.

121.9 × 86.4 cm

Justus. 1972. Acrylic on canvas. 101.6 × 121.9 cm

Locus. 1972. Acrylic on canvas. 114.3 × 121.9 cm

In Excelsius. 1973. Acrylic on

canvas, 121.9 × 91.4 cm

Qualitsas. 1973. Acrylic on canvas. 121.9 × 132.1 cm

Floss Floris.

1973. Mixed media

on canvas. 121.9 ×

101.6 cm

Serra d’Alto. 1973. Mixed media on canvas. 121.9 × 167.6 cm

Fluvialis. 1974. Acrylic on canvas. 121.9 × 142.2 cm

Fluxus. 1974. Mixed media on canvas. 142.2 × 106.7 cm

Gloria. 1974. Acrylic on canvas,

121.9 × 91.4 cm

Rubidus. 1974. Acrylic on canvas, 143.5 × 137.2 cm

Conventus. 1974. Mixed media on canvas. 116.8 × 116.8 cm

Solstitium. 1974. Acrylic on canvas. 137.2 × 121.9 cm

Muskoka. 1975. Acrylic on canvas. 121.9 × 182.9 cm

Quo Vadis. 1976. Mixed media on canvas. 121.9 × 132.1 cm

Lindanisa. 1976. Acrylic on canvas. 121.9 × 167.6 cm

Tabula Rasa. 1976. Acrylic on canvas. 121.9 × 142.2 cm

Peeter Sepp, 1935–2007

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