The Big Money

In four years, Pepsi-Cola’s annualshow has become a major art event. The cogent reason: Pepsi offers more cash (though not more prestige) than any other art show. This year’s payoff: $35,950 in prizes.

Nearly 3,000 painters had heeded the tinkle of Pepsi’s cash register. Of their entries, 159 went on display in Manhattan’s National Academy of Design last week. The paintings were mostly mediocre landscapes and city scenes. Most of the exhibiting artists were unknown on 57th Street (Manhattan’s Gallery Row), so their almost unfailing competence, learned in the country’s burgeoning art schools, came as a slight shock to complacent Manhattanites.

First prize ($2,500) went to one of the few bright spots: a tall, rainbow-colored patchwork of windows against a night sky. It had been painted by an unknown, 34-year-old Philadelphian named Henry Kallem, who submitted it without much expectation of winning a prize. Like last year’s prizewinning What Atomic War Will Do to You, Kallem’s half-abstract canvas bore a socially conscious title: Country Tenement. Explained Kallem: “My idea was to show how I felt seeing this scene one evening in the country—all the people crowded into one building with all that space around. I tried to achieve a somber mood. . . .”

Kallem himself was feeling far from somber. “During the war,” he said, “I worked in an aircraft factory, and I’ve been living on my savings ever since. I gave myself about two years to see how I would make out. If I didn’t get anywhere, then I figured on resigning myself to being a Sunday painter. My savings were almost gone when this happened. You see, it’s the first painting I ever sold.”