Sheffield Kagy

Sheffield Harold Kagy (1907–1989) was an American printmaker and muralist who after that worked subsequently Everett Warner to design US Navy camouflage during World War II.

Active as a printmaker in Cleveland in the 1930s, Sheffield Kagy specialized in block prints of contemporary scenes. Born and raised in Cleveland, he studied with Henry Keller and Paul Travis at the Cleveland School of Art and subsequent to Ernest Fiene at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. In 1932, Kagy opened the short-lived Sheffield Studio School of Art in Cleveland, which offered basic art suggestion taught by a facility that included Kalman Kubinyi.

Kagy was one of and no-one else two Cleveland artists to make prints for the Public Works of Art Project in 1934. He made several linoleum cuts and at least one lithograph for the Cleveland graphic arts project of the Works Progress Administration in 1936. Kagy was a vice president of the Cleveland Print Makers and showed his perform in many local exhibitions including several May Shows (1931–1941). He participated in annual print exhibitions in Chicago, Cleveland, and Dayton, and his performance also appeared in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Venice, Italy. Kagy moved to Washington in 1936 and taught Good arts and printmaking at the Abbott Art School. He worked for the U.S. Treasury Department, 1937–1940, and painted murals for proclaim offices in Walterboro, South Carolina, and Luray, Virginia.

Modeled on the Cleveland Print Makers, Kagy organized the Washington Print Maker's Club in 1940, whose members included Herman Maril and Prentiss Taylor. Kagy was head of the art department at Chevy Chase Junior College in Maryland, 1940–1943, then served in the navy as a camouflage designer for the Bureau of Ships until 1945. After the engagement he became a professor of Good arts at the National Art School, a state he held until 1956. He was an exhibition supervisor and designer for the State Department from 1959 to 1973. Kagy died in Washington.

Bill Robinson, David Steinberg, "Transformations in Cleveland Art, 1796-1945" (CMA, 1996), p. 231.