The Little "500"

Seong Moy

The "Little 500" (known now as the 'Little 5') is a 200 lap men's and 100 lap women's bike race held at Indiana University Bloomington. The racers are required to use one-speed Schwinn bikes and the race benefits student scholarships. The race was dramatized in the film "Breaking Away" in 1979. Moy used a visual cacophony of lines and colors to create a sense of motion to the bicycles while the riders remain motionless as they press on toward the finish.

Seong Moy was born in Canton, China on April 12, 1921 but he immigrated to the United States in 1931. After working in the WPA he went on to study with both Hans Hoffman and S.W. Hayter at Atelier 17 in New York. Moy's work was Abstract Expressionist, even using color woodcut. Working in a combination of abstracted Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism Moy's work, though abstract in its composition, drew on the traditional calligraphic imagery of the Chinese language.

Moy began his teaching career in 1951 with painting classes at the University of Minnesota. Over the years he taught part time at various universities and colleges, including Smith College, Vassar College, Cooper Union, the Pratt Graphic Center and the Art Students League.

Following the lead of Hans Hofmann Moy opened the Seong Moy School of Painting and Graphic Arts, summer school in Provincetown, Mass in 1954 and taught painting, drawing and printmaking for twenty years. He won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1955 and became professor of art at the City College in New York. Moy's work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions and is held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum and the New York Public Library.