Cranbrook Archives Finding Aids

Abstract Steele attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where he studied painting with Zoltan Sepeshy, starting in the fall of 1940. In 1942, he received his first award as a mural artist as part of the Cranbrook team in the Rome Collaborative competition. Not long after, he left Cranbrook to join the war effort and was selected by the War Department Advisory Committee to be a “soldier artist” and document his experience. Steele traveled to Australia and the South Pacific, filling books with sketches...