tryphon: three sounds is a candid portrait of the artist Thomas H. Kapsalis (b. 1925) that also provides an intimate glimpse into the history of the Chicago art scene. Drawing upon personal conversations with Kapsalis, the documentary incorporates extensive images spanning his sixty year career, including paintings, sculptures, ephemera, family photos, and archival footage. Kapsalis contributed to the Chicago artist milieu through over fifty years as a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and continues to contribute through his abstract paintings of impeccable resolution and presence.
These modernist-inspired works emanate a sensibility that combines the Bauhaus aesthetic with a Dadaist irony and humor, presented with the modesty and directness of the Midwest. Kapsalis's art and character exude a hard-won calm tempered through his life experiences, such as his survival as a prisoner of war during WWII.
tryphon was produced by the Cuentos Foundation to accompany the retrospective exhibition "Thomas H. Kapsalis: Artist's House, Paintings and Sculpture, 1947 - 2008," December 4, 2009 - March 21, 2010. This major exhibition celebrating the life and art of this leading abstract Chicago artist was curated by John Corbett & Jim Dempsey and was organized by the Brauer Museum of Art, Valparaiso University.