BIOGRAPHY
German-American, 1927-2020
Capturing the way in which light coalesces around form, substantiating or dissolving it, is a central theme in Wolf Kahn’s painting. His work is recognized to masterfully balance the sensuous qualities of color, light, and paint with a relatively stark geometry of form, giving free reign to complex investigations of perception. Possessing an exceptional ability to discern fleeting atmospheric effects, he gave them presence in a two-dimensional world. His canvases are palpably about place, and yet they transcend mere description.
Perceptual phenomena were a central concern of Kahn’s across seven decades. Hovering between abstraction and figuration, his oils and pastels brilliantly capture the manifold ways in which light interacts with form. They are evidence, too, of his unflagging mastery of color. During his final decade, with diminished eyesight and working with new materials, he continued to coax the subtlest whisper or the most assertive oratory out of his chromatic combinations.
Born in Germany in 1927, Hans Wolfgang Kahn was exposed to the arts at a young age as the son of Stuttgart Philharmonic conductor Emil Kahn and his wife, Nellie Budge. He spent most of his childhood in the care of his paternal grandmother, Anna Kahn, in a house filled with art. With Hitler’s rise to power, his grandmother managed to place eleven-year-old Kahn on the Kindertransport to England. Anna Kahn and his maternal grandparents did not survive the Holocaust. He rejoined his father, stepmother, and siblings in 1940 in New York and attended the High School of Music and Art, graduating in 1945.
After serving in the U.S. Navy, he took classes at The New School for Social Research under Stuart Davis. Kahn then enrolled in Hans Hofmann’s School of Fine Art. Fellow students include Jane Freilicher, Larry Rivers, and Richard Stankiewicz. Kahn remained for an additional 18 months as Hofmann’s studio assistant, including in Provincetown, MA, in the summer of 1947.
Kahn came of artistic age in post-World War II America. His peers at the Hofmann school and around New York City became known as the Second Generation New York School. This designation derives from the title of the Meyer Shapiro’s 1957 Jewish Museum exhibit The New York School: Second Generation. Many of these younger artists were including figuration in their work – a daring move, as abstraction was the ascendant art movement of the time. Kahn maintained his own course; his sense of “belonging to the landscape” as a refugee to this country reflected his attention to, and gratitude for, his new home.
After earning a B.A. from the University of Chicago in one year, Kahn returned to New York and rented a loft at 813 Broadway near Union Square, where he maintained a studio until 1995. He also taught art to young people in New York settlement houses for two years.
He organized the 813 Broadway Exhibition with fellow Hofmann students John Grillo, Lester Johnson, Jan Müller and Felix Pasilis. This show gave rise to the artists’ cooperative Hansa Gallery at 70 E. 12th St., the venue where Kahn had his first critically-acclaimed solo show in 1953.
In April 1956, Kahn met artist Emily Mason at The Artists’ Club in New York and they spent the summer together in Provincetown, MA. Kahn’s painting In the Harbor of Provincetown was soon after acquired by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and included in its 1957 Recent American Acquisitions exhibition. Kahn also joined the Grace Borgenicht Gallery, where he had 29 solo exhibitions until its closure in 1995.
In Provincetown, Mason and Kahn spent time with Milton Avery, a close family friend of Mason and her mother Alice Trumbull Mason. Emily Mason was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and Kahn followed her to Venice, where the two married in March, 1957. They spent the next two years abroad before returning to New York in 1959, where their first child, Cecily, was born.
In 1960, Kahn accepted a visiting professorship at the University of California at Berkeley, where he and Mason met Richard Diebenkorn, Wayne Thiebaud and Nathan Oliveira. His work was included in the Whitney Museum of American Art Young America 1960: Thirty Painters Under Thirty-Six, and the following year was shown in the Whitney Annual Exhibition.
He and Emily spent time in the summers in Maine and also returned to Rome in 1964, where their second daughter, Melany, was born. He continued to travel widely, lecturing, teaching, and making art, across the U.S. and to France, Kenya, Italy, Egypt, and Namibia, and finally to Germany after a long absence.
When their studio neighbor, the painter Frank Stout, moved to Vermont, Mason and Kahn were introduced to the area and in 1968 decided to purchase their own farm in West Brattleboro. The couple would spend the summers in Vermont for the remainder of their lives. Each worked daily in their painting studios. Paintings begun over the summer were transported to New York City to be reconsidered and finished. Kahn drew every day in plein air or in his pastel studio.
Kahn was presented in solo museum exhibitions across the country and internationally. His work is in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art; The Museum of Modern Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Hirshhorn Museum and the Smithsonian American Art Museum; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He worked with Miles McEnery as his gallerist the last 20 years of his life.
He received numerous awards, including the U.S. Department of State’s International Medal of Arts, the National Academy of Design’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Vermont Arts Council’s medal for Outstanding Achievement.
Emily Mason died in Brattleboro, Vermont on December 10, 2019 with Kahn by her side reading poetry. Wolf Kahn died three months later in New York City on March 15, 2020. - Biography courtesy of the Wolf Kahn Foundation, wolfkahnfoundation.org
Wolf Kahn expert, James Yohe has said that,
“The unique blend of Realism and the formal discipline of Color Field painting sets the work of Wolf Kahn apart. Kahn is an artist who embodies the synthesis of his modern abstract training with Hans Hofmann, with the palette of Matisse and Rothko's sweeping bands of color, and the atmospheric qualities of American Impressionism. It is precisely this fusion of color, spontaneity and representation that has produced such a rich and expressive body of work.”
EDUCATION:
1966, John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship
1962, Fulbright Scholarship to Italy
1950-51, University of Chicago, Bachelor of Arts, Chicago
1947, Studied under Hans Hofmann at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art
1946, New School, studied under Stuart Davis
1945, High School of Art and Music, New York
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS:
Selected Exhibitions
2021
Wolf Kahn: The Last Decade, Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY
2018
Wolf Kahn: A 50 Year Survey, Jerald Melberg Gallery, Charlotte, NC
2011
Wolf Kahn: Brattleboro Pastels, Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, Brattleboro, VT
2010
Wolf Kahn Pastels, Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, GA
Wolf Kahn: Pastels, Spartanburg Art Museum, Spartanburg, SC
2006
Wolf Kahn in Provincetown, Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA
Wolf Kahn: Landscapes of Light 1953-2006, Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, Brattleboro, VT
2002
Landscapes by Wolf Kahn, Ogunquit Museum of American, Ogunquit, ME
2001
Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, Germany
2000
Wolf Kahn: Fifty Years of Pastels, Jerald Melberg Gallery, Charlotte, NC; traveled to Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH; Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach, VA; Hickory Museum of Art, Hickory, NC; Alexandria Museum of Art, Alexandria, LA
1999
Suzanna Allan Fine Art, London, England
Marianne Friedland Gallery, Naples, FL
Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, GA
Jerald Melberg Gallery, Charlotte, NC
1996
Wolf Kahn: A Dialogue Between Traditional & Abstract Art: Paintings, Pastels, & Monoprints 1970-1995, Boca Raton Museum, Boca Raton, FL; traveled to Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH; Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS; Nevada Museum of Art, Reno NV
1994
The Columbus Museum, Columbus, GA
Marshall University, Huntington, WV
Skidmore College, Schick Art Gallery, Saratoga Springs, NY
University of Louisville, Allen R. Hite Art Institute, Louisville, KN
1991
Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
1990
Associated American Artists, New York, NY
Wolf Kahn: Landscape as Radiance, Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art, Ft. Lauderdale, FL; traveled to the New Jersey Center for Visual Arts, Summit, NJ
1987
San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA
1983
Wolf Kahn: Landscapes, San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA; traveled to Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ; Metropolitan Museum and Art Center, Coral Gables, FL; The Heckscher Museum,
1982
Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, NY
Schenectady Museum, Schenectady, NY
1981
Wolf Kahn: Ten Years of Landscape Painting, The Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago, IL; traveled to Schenectady Museum, Schenectady, NY; Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC; The Museum of Art, Munson-William-Proctor Institute, Utica, NY; Cheekwood Fine Arts Center, Nashville, TN
1980
Recent Acquisitions, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (Group Exhibition)
1979
Rhode Island School of Design, Museum of Art, Providence, RI
1972
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA
University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE
1963
Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO
1962
Forty Artists Under Forty, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (Group Exhibition)
1961
Annual Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (Group Exhibition)
1960
University of California, Berkeley, CA
Young America 1960, 30 American Painters Under 36, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (Group Exhibition)
1957
Annual Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (Group Exhibition)
The New York School: Second Generation, The Jewish Museum, New York, NY (Group Exhibition)
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS:
Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, St. Joseph, MO
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY
American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, NC
Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD
Barry Art Museum, Norfolk, VA
Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley, CA
Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX
Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, FL
Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH
Canton Museum of Art, Canton, OH
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
Castellani Art Museum, Niagara University, NY
Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, Nashville, TN
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA
Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME
Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Winter Park, FL
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX
Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO
David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University, Providence, RI
Davis Museum, Wellesley, MA
Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, OH
De Young Museum, San Francisco, CA
Dubuque Museum of Art, Dubuque, IA
Eli and Edythe Brode Art Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI
El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME
Figge Art Museum, Davenport, IA
Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, MA
Fleming Museum of Art, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT
Fogg Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Fort Worth Community Arts Center, Fort Worth, TX
Francis Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY
Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, The University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK
George Segal Gallery, Montclair University, Montclair, NJ
Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC
Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, NY
Hickory Museum of Art, Hickory, NC
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
Hofstra University Museum, Hempstead, NY
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN
Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, Stanford, CA
John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO
Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL
Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Laurel, MS
List Visual Arts Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
Marianne Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS
Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston MA
Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, MA
Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, MA
Middlebury College Museum of Art, Middlebury, VT
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO
Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI
Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, MN
The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC
Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, AL
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY
Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, GA
Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, MA
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
National Academy of Design, New York, NY
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO
Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, Purchase, NY
Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV
New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA
Newark Museum, Newark, NJ
North Dakota Museum of Art, Grand Forks, ND
Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA
Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, ME
Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME
Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ
Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA
Rahr-West Art Museum, Manitowoc, WI
The Raymond Jonson Collection, University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, NM
Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI
The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY
Saint Louis Art Museum, St Louis, MO
The San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA
Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, NE
Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art at Loretto Saint Francis University, Loretto, PA
Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS
Syracuse University Art Galleries, Syracuse, NY
Tufts University Art Gallery, Medford, MA
Tulsa Performing Arts Center, Tulsa, OK
University Art Museum, State University of New York, Albany, NY
United States Embassy, Quito, Ecuador
University of Colorado Art Museum, Boulder, CO
University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, FL
Utah Museum of Fine Arts, The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT
Vero Beach Museum of Art, Vero Beach, FL
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT
Yosemite Museum, Yosemite Valley, CA
PRIVATE COLLECTIONS:
American Express, New York
Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago
Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
Chase Manhattan Bank, New York
Ernest and Young, New York
Paul Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, LLP, New York
The Rockefeller Group, New York
US Government, Number One Observatory Circle, Washington, D.C.
AWARDS and APPOINTMENTS:
Marlboro College, Honorary Degree of Doctor of Arts, 2019
U.S. Department of State, International Medal of Arts, 2017
University of Chicago, Outstanding Alumni Professional Achievement Award, 2012
National Academy of Design, Lifetime Achievement Award, 2006
Union College, Honorary Degree of Doctor of Fine Arts, 2004
Wheaton College, Honorary Degree of Doctor of Fine Arts, 2000
Vermont Arts Council Walter Cerf Medal for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts, 1998
New York City Art Commission, Member, 1993-95
American Artist Achievement Award, 1993
National Board of College Art Association, elected to Membership, 1980-85
American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, elected to membership, 1984; Vice President for Art, 1993-1996; Art Award, 1979; Hassam Fund Purchase Award, 1979
National Academy of Design, elected to membership, 1980; board, 1982; treasurer, 1990-94; honoree, 2001 benefit; Lifetime Achievement Award, 2006
John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, 1966-67
Fulbright Scholarship, 1962
PUBLICATIONS:
2015, McAgee, William C. Wolf Kahn. (New York)
2013, Kahn, Wolf, and Nicholas Delbanco. Wolf Kahn. (New York)
2011, Spring, Justin, Karen Wilkin, and Louis Finkelstein. Wolf Kahn. (New York: Abrams)
2010, Kahn, Wolf, and Chrinstina Kee. Wolf Kahn: Color & Consequence. (New York)
2010, Kahn, Wolf. Wolf Kahn. (Montreal: Galerie De Bellefeuille,)
2007, Kahn, Wolf, and Karen Wilkin. Wolf Kahn: Sizing up. (New York, NY)
2004, Kahn, Wolf, and Elizabeth Frank. Wolf Kahn. (New York)
2003, Kahn, Wolf and John Updike, Wolf Kahn’s America: An Artist’s Travels. (New York: Abrams)
2002, Kahn, Wolf, and David Cohen. Wolf Kahn: March 8-27, 2002. (New York: Beadleston Gallery)
2002, Wolf Kahn. (New York: Beadleston Gallery)
1999, Gruber, Richard J., and Wolf Kahn. Wolf Kahn: Painting the South. (Augusta, GA: Morris Museum of Art)
1996, Spring, Justin, and Louis Finkelstein. Wolf Kahn. (New York: Harry N. Abrams)
1993, Kahn, Wolf. Wolf Kahn. (Naples, FL: Philharmonic Center for the Arts)
1993, Kahn, Wolf. Wolf Kahn. (Boston: Thomas Segal Gallery)
1991, Kahn, Wolf, and Robert P. Conway. Wolf Kahn. (New York: Associated American Artists)
1989, Kahn, Wolf. Wolf Kahn: New Work, 1987–1989. (New York: Grace Borgenicht Gallery)
1988, Kahn, Wolf. Wolf Kahn: New Landscapes. (Santa Fe, NM: Gerald Peters Gallery)
1987, Kahn, Wolf, and Cynthia Goodman. Wolf Kahn: Paintings. (New York: Gallery)
1983, Kahn, Wolf. Wolf Kahn: Landscapes. (San Diego: San Diego Museum of Art)
1980, Kahn, Wolf. Wolf Kahn. (London: The Galleries)
1971, Kahn, Wolf. Wolf Kahn. (New York: Grace Borgenicht Gallery)