Wolf Kahn 2023

WOLF KAHN

WOLF KAHN

511 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011 515 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011

525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011 520 West 21st Street New York NY 10011

WOLF KAHN’S ABSTRACT LANDSCAPES: 1985 – 1996

By Maura Reilly, PhD

Wolf Kahn was an artist concerned principally with the direct, sensual experience of color, in the tradition of other “greats,” such as Pierre Bonnard, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Hans Hofmann, and Mark Rothko. Like Claude Monet, who chose to paint the same subjects again and again— including haystacks, waterlilies, and the Rouen Cathedral—Kahn primarily painted landscapes, but only as a ruse to explore color and light. Throughout his career, Kahn’s colors were often searing and jarring—blazing orange trees juxtaposed with hot magenta grass and skies of acidic yellow green. Color was responsive only to emotional expression and the formal needs of the canvas, not the realities of nature. His were not colors that sunlight finds in nature; instead, as the art critic Peter Schjeldahl once stated, Kahn’s “are colors that an aroused sensibility finds, with joy, in the act of painting.”1

In a 1999 interview, Kahn explained what he was trying to achieve with color. “My choice of color is dictated by tact and decorum stretched by an unholy desire to be outrageous,” he said, adding, “I want the color to be surprising to people without being offensive. By offensive, I mean something that makes the teeth grind. I like shock effect, but shock that settles into a harmonious whole.”2 The majority of his oeuvre from the 1950s until his passing in 2020 is characterized by “shocking” color combinations that coalesce into “harmonious” compositions. But it is his abstract landscapes of the mid-1980s through to the 1990s, in particular, with their blinding color combinations, that reflect his interest in what he, in 2008, called the “danger point” in color.3

1. Neil Genzlinger, “Wolf Kahn, 92, Who Painted Landscapes Using a Vibrant Palette, Dies,” The New York Times, March 28, 2020.

2. This quote is from a 1999 interview with The Richmond Times-Dispatch of Virginia on the occasion of a Kahn exhibition at Reynolds Gallery in Richmond, as referenced in Neil Genzlinger, “Wolf Kahn, 92, Who Painted Landscapes Using a Vibrant Palette, Dies,” The New York Times, March 28, 2020.

3. Ibid.

Pierre Bonnard, Paysage de Cannet, 1943 Oil on canvas, 27 1/2 x 31 1/2 inches 70 x 80 cm, Private Collection

Kahn’s lifelong preoccupation with color was influenced initially by his relationship with his art teacher Hans Hofmann, who encouraged his students, in Kahn’s words, “to use their imaginative fantasy to regard color as an independent entity.”4 For Hofmann, color and shape were the building blocks of space. Kahn took this idea to heart and built up his compositions, using masses of saturated hues that “push and pull” each other into fictive spaces.5 For Hofmann, who argued that “a picture should be made with feeling, not with knowing,” color was subjective, not objective.6 Kahn agreed. Indeed, as he once instructed students at the National Academy of Design, “Don’t intentionally choose a color. Just pick it up.”7 Hofmann also instructed his students “to view space as a whole rather than as a series of details,” an idea that Kahn pursued throughout his career, opting to present nature as elemental forms, devoid of specifics. For Kahn, leaves on a tree, for instance, were of no interest; rather, it was the compositional power of the vertical form, that is the tree, which was paramount.

4. “In Conversation: Wolf Kahn with David Kapp and Robert Berlind,” The Brooklyn Rail, May 2007.

5 . “Push and pull” is the play between color, shape, and placement on a surface to create competing forces that produce depth within a flat surface. See James Panero, “Gallery Chronicle,” The New Criterion , June 2007.

6 Hofmann as quoted in Elaine De Kooning, “Hans Hofmann Paints a Picture,” ArtNews, November 19, 2012. Available at: https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/hans-hofmann-paints-a-picture-2125/

While Kahn’s early landscapes demonstrate a commitment to the muted colors and luminosity Monet employed in his paintings, Kahn’s abstract landscapes of 1980s and 1990s reveal a radically different palette. After a major Bonnard retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1948, Kahn looked to the Postimpressionist artist, and especially to his late work, as a source of inspiration. As Kahn explained, Bonnard “liked the idea of taking a color to an extreme position.” 8 Take, for instance, Bonnard’s painting Paysage de Cannet (1943), within which the French artist experiments with the ornamental and aesthetic potential of color and applies paint as a patchwork of broken, textured brushworks. The picture is composed of innumerable contrasting, often unnaturalistic colors encompassing blue trees, yellow grass, and so on. The intoxicating color combinations of the late works of Bonnard, who was himself inspired by the Fauves—Henri Matisse and André Derain—are akin to Kahn’s striking juxtapositions of the bubble-gum—like colors that one encounters in his abstract landscapes of the 1980s and 1990s.

Each of the vibrant landscapes from this period is reduced to a series of mostly horizontal or diagonal bands of bright colors, often in stark contrast with one another. Each composition verges on total abstraction. Often, the only indication that the viewer is looking at a landscape is the title of the work, e.g., Edged Meadow, Pond’s Edge , and so on. Only a few of them have a clear reference to nature. Penobscot Bay III, painted in 1990, is one such example. While the colors are unnaturalistic (the water is purple and brown), there is a clear horizon line, a delineated foreground in green, and a tiny land mass in yellow to the left. South Pond in Sunlight (1985) also refers more accurately to nature insofar as there is a clear greenish foreground, a blue-pink middle ground, a yellow-green tree line, and a pale pink sky.

7. Kahn as quoted in Lucinda Franks, “Unlocking the Unconscious,” ArtNews, December 2001.

8. “‘To Do Rothko Again, After Nature’: Wolf Kahn in Conversation with David Cohen,” artcritical, April 18, 2020.

Paul Gauguin, Matamoe, 1892 Oil on canvas 45 3/8 x 33 7/8 inches, 115 x 86 cm

The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia

Mark Rothko, No. 7, 1951 Oil on canvas 94 3/4 x 54 5/8 inches, 240.7 x 138.7 cm

Private Collection © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

For the most part, however, the landscapes from this period are entirely abstract. Last Light Along the River (1990) is a large painting comprised of three colors—bright green, lemon yellow, and light gray. There is no indication in the painting as to where the “river” of the title is located. It is an un-space, as is the case with many others in the series. Evening Confrontation (AKA Evening Experience) (1989) is a composition made up of three triangles—one green, one brown, and one light pink—arranged on diagonals. Knowing that Kahn principally paints landscapes, one must assume, despite its ambiguous title, that this is a scenic composition, but it’s not evident when one views the painting. One of the more stunning works in the series is Evening Melancholia (1990). In it, Kahn organizes the abstract landscape into flat, diagonal, colored planes: evergreen for the foreground, brown for the middle ground, bright blue for a (possible) tree line, and magenta pink and light gray for the sky. The bright, saturated colors and the rhythmic relationship between the colored planes result in an extraordinary composition. Magenta Reflected (1996) is equally astonishing. Pale green, magenta, yellow, and gray horizontals are fused together in dazzling combination.

Wolf Kahn, Venice in the Autumn, 1958 Oil on canvas 48 x 56 inches, 121.9 x 142.2 cm Wolf Kahn Foundation, Brattleboro, VT

Wolf Kahn, Into a Clearing, 1960 Oil on canvas 61 3/4 x 53 1/2 inches, 156.8 x 135.9 cm Private Collection, Haverford, PA

In these four paintings, as with the others throughout the series, Kahn uses unmodulated color and simplified forms, much like the undulating flat colored planes found in Paul Gauguin’s landscape forms, as in his Matamoe (1892). Like Gauguin’s, Kahn’s colors in this series do not fade with distance as the rules of atmospheric perspective suggest they should. Their undiminished intensity makes the scenes appear flat and decorative, as if they are simply colors arranged in patterns on the surface of the canvas. As Kahn explained: “If I have pictorial depth it’s a fault because I really would like the painting to appear flat. I want everything to come back to the surface.” He added, “To me it’s all marks on a surface.”9 The flat surfaces encountered in this series deny the illusion of depth. Like Mark Rothko’s color fields, Kahn’s landscapes from the 1990s engage with, and ultimately undermine, the post-Renaissance conception of a painting being like a window.10 Any indication of spatial depth is negated by color and paint application, which emphasize the flat surface of the canvas and fail to create a convincing illusionistic scene. We never forget that we are looking at a painting and not out a window.

9. Ibid.

10. Kahn’s reverence for Rothko was revealed when he stated, “I’ve said on some occasions, with a certain amount of snideness, that my aim is to do Rothko again, after nature (paraphrasing what Cézanne said about himself and Poussin).” Ibid.

Wolf Kahn, The Gradual Meeting of Wet and Dry II, 2000 Oil on canvas 52 x 66 inches, 132.1 x 167.6cm Private Collection, Rougemont, NC

Kahn chose to evade representational imagery in this series, but this was not his first foray into near-total abstraction. Throughout the 1950s to 1960s, Kahn experimented with pure abstraction. His Venice in the Autumn (1958), an entirely pale-gray canvas, is an example. His painting Into a Clearing (1960) is spatially ambiguous, insofar as it is a bramble of expressionistic brushstrokes in an allover composition with no subject matter. In the early 2000s, Kahn produced another series of abstract landscapes, including The Gradual Meeting of Wet and Dry II (2000), a canvas of modulated royal blue paint interrupted only by a green-orange triangle in the bottom right. In 2003, he produced All in White, an allover composition of rapid-fire staccato brushstrokes in multiple colors reminiscent of Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings—another landscape, albeit abstracted. But what ultimately differentiates the abstract landscapes from the 1950s, the 1960s, and the early 2000s from the landscapes of the 1980s and 1990s are the tangy contrasts of color and the flat, decorative color fields that look like interlocking puzzle pieces. These abstract landscapes are unlike any others in his oeuvre, and they are nothing short of magnificent.

Wolf Kahn, All in White, 2003 Oil on canvas

36 x 52 inches, 91.4 x 132.1 cm Private Collection, Greenwich, CT

Maura Reilly, PhD, is the Director of the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University. She is the former Executive Director of the National Academy of Design and the Founding Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. She has published several books, including Curatorial Activism: Towards an Ethics of Curating, which was named a “Top Ten Art Book” by The New York Times in 2018. She received her Masters and PhD in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.

10 South Pond in Sunlight, 1985

Oil on canvas 52 x 72 inches 132.1 x 182.9 cm

Imaginary Shoreline on a Lake, 1986

Oil on canvas 43 x 66 inches 109.2 x 167.6 cm

Evening Confrontation (AKA Evening Experience), 1989

Oil on canvas 40 x 52 inches 101.6 x 132.1 cm

16 Dark Complimentaries, 1990

Oil on canvas 28 x 40 inches 71.1 x 101.6 cm

18

Edged Meadow, 1990 Oil on canvas 26 x 36 inches 66 x 91.4 cm

Evening Melancholia, 1990

Oil on canvas 42 x 72 inches 106.7 x 182.9 cm

Hot Summer, 1990 Oil on canvas 52 x 66 inches 132.1 x 167.6 cm

Last Light Along the River, 1990

Oil on canvas 52 x 66 inches 132.1 x 167.6 cm

Penobscot Bay III, 1990

Oil on canvas 53 x 79 inches 134.6 x 200.7 cm

Unlikely Light, 1990 Oil on canvas 28 x 38 inches 71.1 x 96.5 cm

Diagonals II, 1991

Oil on canvas 26 x 36 inches 66 x 91.4 cm

Pond’s Edge, 1994

Oil on canvas 20 x 34 inches 50.8 x 86.4 cm

34

River (2 squares format), 1994

Oil on canvas 16 x 32 inches 40.6 x 81.3 cm

36 Wedge, 1995

Oil on canvas 40 x 52 inches 101.6 x 132.1 cm

38 Magenta Reflected, 1996

Oil on canvas 22 x 38 inches 55.9 x 96.5 cm

CHRONOLOGY

1927

Hans Wolfgang Kahn is born on 4 October in Stuttgart, Germany, the fourth child of Nellie Budge and Emil Kahn. His father is the conductor of the Stuttgart Philharmonic and the Orchestra of the South German Radio. Shortly after Kahn’s birth, his mother leaves the family.

1930

Emil Kahn marries Ellen Beck, a young singer who does not wish to raise an infant. Kahn is sent to live with his paternal grandmother, Anna.

1932

Kahn’s mother dies in Berlin. Though separated from his immediate family, he enjoys childhood with his doting grandmother, her maid, and English governess. He also spends time with his maternal grandparents, Siegfried and Ella Budge. He is raised in privilege, surrounded by antiques and the family’s art collection. Kahn’s early interest in art is encouraged. He enjoys drawing to make people laugh, drawing caricatures as well as military and athletic subjects.

1937

Kahn’s father, having lost his appointment to the Stuttgart Philharmonic in 1933 when Hitler came to power, takes Kahn’s stepmother, two brothers, and sister to live in the United States. Kahn attends Philantropin, the “gymnasium” of the Frankfurt Jewish community for two years and takes art lessons with Fraulein von Joeden.

1939

Two months before the outbreak of World War II, Kahn, at age 11, is sent to Cambridge, England, with a children’s refugee transport. He stays with two host families over the next year and attends Cambridge and County High School for Boys. Kahn’s three grandparents are sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

1940

Kahn joins his family in Upper Montclair, NJ, where his father teaches at Montclair State Teachers College. Emil and Ellen Kahn divorce, and Kahn’s 17-year-old sister runs the household. Kahn attends the Experimental Laboratory School of Montclair State Teachers College.

1943

Kahn and his family move to New York City and live on Riverside Drive at 102nd Street. He attends the High School of Music & Art, graduating with the class of 1945. Among Kahn’s classmates are Allan Kaprow and Rachel Rosenthal. Kahn spends long hours sketching animals at the Central Park Zoo and the Museum of Natural History.

1945

Kahn enlists in the United States Navy and attends radio school. He is stationed in Chicago, IL, in Del Monte, CA, and at the Anacostia Naval Research Lab in Washington, DC.

1946

Kahn is discharged from the Navy and takes classes at the New School for Social Research in New York City, studying with the painter Stuart Davis and the printmaker Hans Jelinek.

1947

At age 19, Kahn enters Hans Hofmann’s School of Fine Art at 52 West 8th Street in New York and in Provincetown, MA. His fellow students are Jane Freilicher, Paul Georges, Robert Goodnough, Allan Kaprow, Jan Müller, Larry Rivers, Leatrice Rose, and Richard Stankiewicz. Kahn remains with Hofmann as his studio assistant and school monitor. He is included in New Provincetown ’47 at the Seligmann Gallery in New York, an exhibition of students in Hofmann’s summer classes, curated by the critic Clement Greenberg.

1948

Kahn attends lectures on modern art by Meyer Schapiro at Columbia University and The New School for Social Research. During this time, he develops a lasting friendship with the painter Larry Rivers.

1949

Kahn enrolls at the University of Chicago and receives a Bachelor of Arts degree. He takes class with the American philosopher Kenneth Burke.

1950

Kahn travels across country, working odd jobs, including harvesting peas at a Shoshone Indian reservation on the border of Oregon and Idaho, and at a logging camp in Deadwood, OR. He is offered a scholarship to study at the University of Chicago but declines.

1951

Kahn returns to New York and teaches arts and crafts to children and teenagers in city settlement houses for two years. He takes a loft at 813 Broadway, near the corner of 12th Street, which he keeps until 1995. With Miles Forst, John Grillo, Lester Johnson, Jan Müller, and Felix Pasilis (most of whom are former Hofmann students), Kahn organizes the 813 Broadway Exhibition. Out of this exhibition comes the artists’ cooperative Hansa Gallery, located at 70 East 12th Street. Meyer Schapiro buys a drawing from Kahn, which leads to a lifelong friendship.

1952

Kahn travels to Baton Rouge, LA, where his brother Peter is teaching art at Louisiana State University. He paints rodeo encampments and levees. He exhibits paintings in the Hansa Gallery group exhibition.

1953

At age 26, Kahn has his first solo exhibition at the Hansa Gallery. It is reviewed in Art News by the painter and critic Fairfield Porter, who writes, “The excellence of this first exhibition...comes as no surprise.”

The critic Dore Ashton writes an article on Kahn’s life and work for Pen and Brush. Kahn spends the summer painting in Provincetown, living alone in a shack on Race Point. He is included in the Second Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture at the Stable Gallery in New York.

1954

Kahn develops a close friendship with the painter Elaine de Kooning.

1955

Kahn’s second solo exhibition is well-received. He meets the painter Willem de Kooning, who gives him encouragement. They maintain a friendship. The poet and critic Frank O’Hara includes Kahn in his essay “Nature and the New Painting,” in Folder. Kahn paints for six months in Tepoztlán, Mexico. The work is shown at Galería Antonio Souza in Mexico City the following year. He develops a friendship with Fairfield Porter. Kahn’s drawings are used to illustrate Peter Viereck’s poem “Some Refrains at the Charles River” in Art News Annual

1956

Kahn has his first solo exhibition at the Grace Borgenicht Gallery in New York. The critic Thomas B. Hess includes Kahn in “U.S. Painting: Some Recent Directions” in Art News Annual. Kahn’s work is selected for the Fifth Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture at the Stable Gallery. Meyer Schapiro notes Kahn’s work in his essay “The Younger American Painters of Today” in The Listener. At a meeting of The Artists’ Club, Kahn meets Emily Mason, the daughter of the artist Alice Trumbull Mason. They spend the summer in Provincetown and Kahn recalls this summer as one of the happiest of his life. He begins what he calls his “love affair with Bonnard,” influenced by Bonnard’s taste for vibrant color and luminosity. Kahn is also impressed by the dignity and self-assurance of another artist he meets that summer, Milton Avery.

1957

Kahn travels to Venice to join Emily Mason, who is there on a Fulbright Scholarship. They marry in Venice and remain in Italy for two years. A joint exhibition of their work is shown at the Galeria d’Arte San Giorgio in Venice. He is included in The New York School: The Second Generation at the Jewish Museum in New York as well as the Annual Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The Museum of Modern Art acquires his work for its permanent collection.

1958

Kahn and Mason live and paint in Spoleto, Italy. They meet Louis Finkelstein and Gretna Campbell, with whom he maintains lifelong friendships. Kahn’s work is included in group exhibitions in Italy. A solo exhibition of Kahn’s Italian paintings is shown at the Grace Borgenicht Gallery. He is included in the Annual Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, which acquires his painting Olive Orchard for its permanent collection.

1959

Kahn spends the summer in Martha’s Vineyard, MA, and starts a new series of sailboat paintings. He exhibits in the 145th Annual Exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia and has a one-man exhibition of his work at Union College in Schenectady, NY. In September, Kahn and Mason’s first child, Cecily, is born.

1960

While a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Kahn develops friendships with the painters Elmer Bischoff, Richard Diebenkorn, Nathan Oliveira, and Wayne Thiebaud and the art historian James Ackerman. He has a solo exhibition at the University of California, Berkeley. His work is included in Young America 1960, 30 American Painters Under 36 at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Kahn declines a full-time position at the university and returns to New York.

1961

Kahn joins the faculty of Cooper Union in New York, as an adjunct Professor of Art, where he remains until 1977. He spends the summer in Stonington, ME, and is included in the Annual Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

1962

He teaches at the Haystack School in Deer Isle, ME, where he remains for the summer and visits Fairfield Porter on Great Spruce Head Island, ME. He is included in Forty Artists Under Forty at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He receives a Fulbright Scholarship to Italy. There, he takes a studio and apartment in Milan for the winter and summers in nearby Viterbo. He meets and becomes friends with the conceptual artist Lucio Pozzi. He has one-man exhibitions at the Kansas City Art Institute and Michigan State University. He meets the painter Pat Adams, with whom he maintains a life-long friendship.

1964

Kahn moves to Rome and has a studio in Prati near the Piazza del Popolo. While Kahn and Mason are in Rome, their daughter Melany is born.

1965

Kahn’s family returns to New York and moves from 813 Broadway to 15th Street. Kahn and his family spend time on Martha’s Vineyard.

1966

Kahn is awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. He is commissioned to do portraits for the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York: 1966, 1967, and 1968.

1967

Kahn summers in Deer Isle, ME.

1968

Guided by a friend, the painter Frank Stout, Kahn buys a farm in West Brattleboro, VT, where he summers from this point on. Kahn exhibits at the National Academy in New York.

1970

Kahn is commissioned to paint Litchfield Plantation in Pawleys Island, SC.

1972

Kahn has one-man exhibitions at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, and the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, VA.

1973

Kahn travels to Kenya with his family and then to Italy. He then returns to Vermont to spend the rest of the summer painting landscapes.

Kahn delivers a lecture, “On the Hofmann School,” at the College Art Association Convention, and speaks “On Being an Art Student” at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture.

1974

Kahn spends part of the summer painting in Corrèze, France.

1975

As a guest lecturer, Kahn speaks on the life and work of the painter Jan Müller, a fellow Hofmann student, at the Alliance of Figurative Artists.

1977

Kahn accepts the position of chairman of the College Art Association Committee to award the Prize for Distinguished Teaching in Art, which is presented to his friend Louis Finkelstein. Kahn is included in Artists’ Postcards at The Drawing Center in New York.

1979

Kahn receives the Art Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York. He is included in Hans Hofmann as Teacher: His Students’ Drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

1980

Kahn is elected a member of the National Academy in New York, and a member of the National Board of the College Art Association. He exhibits regularly at the National Academy Annuals.

1981

Wolf Kahn 10 Years of Landscape Painting, a traveling exhibition, opens at the Arts Club of Chicago.

1983

Kahn lectures on Hans Hofmann at The New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. His essay “Milton Avery’s Good Example” is published in Art Journal. Wolf Kahn: Landscapes opens at the San Diego Museum of Art, and travels to museums nationwide.

1984

Kahn is elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lectures at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is selected for the Advisory Committee of the Vermont Studio School. He is also an artistin-residence for one term at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH.

1985

Kahn is included in numerous group exhibitions. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Oregon State University display his pastels.

1986

Kahn’s daughter Cecily, a painter, marries David Kapp, an urban landscape painter, in May.

1987

Kahn is invited to be the commencement speaker for the graduating class of the Maine College of Art.

1988

Kahn’s first grandchild, Millie Kapp, is born in March. He delivers a lecture at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University, on “Traditional Concerns in an Untraditional Era.”

1989

Kahn gives the commencement speech at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He becomes a trustee of the Vermont Studio Center.

1990

His second grandchild, Arthur Kapp, is born in February. Art in America publishes Kahn’s essay “Hofmann’s Mixed Messages.” Wolf Kahn: Landscapes as Radiance opens at the NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale in Fort Lauderdale, FL. Wolf Kahn: Landscape Painter, is created by the filmmaker Alan Dater and debuts at the museum’s show. The film wins a CINE Golden Eagle Award.

1991

Kahn is awarded the Benjamin Altman Landscape Prize by the National Academy.

1992

Kahn travels to Zihuatanejo, Mexico, to make pastels of sunsets over the Pacific Ocean. Kahn’s article “Connecting Incongruities,” is published in Art in America. The Wolf Kahn: Exploring Monotypes traveling exhibition opens and circulates for three years. He designs a “First Day of Issue” postage stamp for the United Nations Philatelic Collection.

1993

Kahn cruises on the Nile River in Egypt. When he returns, he is an artistin-residence at Yosemite National Park in California. He travels by boat to paint the landscape along the Connecticut River, exhibiting the resulting works at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, CT. He receives the 1993 American Artist Achievement Award for pastels. He is appointed to the New York City Art Commission and named vice president for art at the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

1994

Kahn travels to Hawaii. He is commissioned by the Atlantic Golf Club in Bridgehampton, NY, to paint a large picture for the clubhouse.

1995

Kahn moves his New York studio from 813 Broadway to a walkup on West 21st Street.

1996

A traveling exhibition, Wolf Kahn: A Dialogue Between Traditional and Abstract Art, opens at the Boca Raton Museum of Art. Kahn delivers the eulogy for Meyer Schapiro at the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He completes a color etching commissioned by the American Academy of Arts and Letters for its 100th anniversary celebration. Wolf Kahn, by Justin Spring, is published by Harry N. Abrams.

1997

As one of the founding members of the Hansa Gallery, Kahn is included in the exhibition at the Zabriskie Gallery, The Hansa Gallery (1952–1959) Revisited. He is included in A Tribute to Grace Borgenicht Gallery, his dealer of 41 years, organized by DC Moore Gallery. Kahn donates to the Vermont Studio Center, and the Wolf Kahn Studio Building is named after him. All in the Family at the New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, CT, includes the paintings of Kahn; his wife, Emily Mason; his mother-in-law, Alice Trumbull Mason; his daughter Cecily Kahn; his son-in-law David Kapp; and his brother Peter Kahn.

1998

The Vermont Arts Council presents Wolf Kahn with the Walter Cerf Medal for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts.

1999

Kahn is artist-in-residence at the Vermont Studio Center, which he has visited for the past 15 years. He lectures at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and speaks on a panel “Jackson Pollock” at the National Academy.

2000

Kahn receives an honorary doctor of fine arts degree from Wheaton College in Norton, MA. In July, Kahn travels with his daughter Melany to the African country of Namibia, where he is drawn to the dry, brushy landscape. He spends three weeks meeting the Namibian people and doing pastel studies that become a major influence on his painting style. He has numerous solo exhibitions, including a large traveling show entitled Fifty Years of Pastels. Wolf Kahn Pastels is published by Harry N. Abrams.

2001

Kahn is the honoree at a National Academy benefit. His daughter Melany marries Bo Foard in September, and they settle in New Hampshire with Bo’s two children, Emily and Cooper. He has a major solo exhibition of his work in Hamburg, Germany at Galerie Brockstedt and the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, which has a reproduction of the music room from the mansion of Kahn’s great aunt in its courtyard. This is Kahn’s first time back in Germany since the war. It becomes a “homecoming” for him, generating much publicity. Wolf Kahn—50 Years of Pastels is organized by the Jerald Melberg Gallery in Charlotte, NC, and travels to the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art in Virginia Beach, VA; the Hickory Museum of Art in Hickory, NC; and the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, OH.

2002

A new grandson, Mason Foard, is born. The Ogunquit Museum of American Art in Ogunquit, ME, hosts an exhibition of Kahn’s work. He is awarded an honorary doctor of fine arts degree from Union College in Schenectady, NY. Kahn has his first show with Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art in New York (now Miles McEnery Gallery). Wheaton College hosts A Shared Passion for Color: Artists Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason.

2003

Wolf Kahn’s America: An Artist’s Travels is published by Harry N. Abrams.

2004

The National Academy invites Kahn to curate, The Artist’s Eye: Wolf Kahn as Curator. An exhibition of Kahn’s own work, Nature and Color, is presented in an adjacent gallery. Kahn appears on New Hampshire Public Radio’s The Front Porch and Vermont Public Television’s Profiles.

2005

A new granddaughter, Ally Foard, is born. Kahn travels to Niagara Falls and creates new works from the vantage points of earlier American painters, including Frederic Edwin Church and George Inness. Alan Dater creates a short film about Kahn’s time at Niagara Falls. Kahn delivers a lecture at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, “Art and Immorality.”

2006

The National Academy presents Kahn with its Lifetime Achievement Award. Wolf Kahn Day is declared in Vermont by Governor Jim Douglas and the Brattleboro selectmen, and it is celebrated with a large party centered around his exhibition at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center.

Kahn gives a lecture at the Brattleboro Museum entitled “The Uses and Misuses of Painting,” and gives a lecture entitled “Growing Up Privileged, and Jewish, in Nazi Germany,” at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College in Keene, NH. He travels to New Orleans to do post-Hurricane Katrina pastel drawings of the same trees he drew in 2001. The new pastels are exhibited alongside the earlier drawings at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. The Niagara Falls work and Dater’s 2005 film are exhibited together at the Castellani Art Museum of Niagara University in Niagara Falls, NY. The Provincetown Art Association and Museum exhibits Kahn’s early works, many of which were created during his years in Provincetown under Hans Hofmann. The Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC hosts Wolf Kahn’s Barns.

2007

Kahn celebrates his 50th wedding anniversary with Emily Mason in March and his 80th birthday in October. Art in America publishes the journal of his 2006 visit to New Orleans.

2008

Kahn delivers a lecture at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, “Subject Matters.” A visit to Wyoming and Montana includes time in Yellowstone National Park. A two-part interview with Kahn by NewArtTV is posted on its website.

2009

Kahn gives a lecture at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, “Are Artists Special?” He travels to Turkey and the Netherlands, and he does a series of barns based on the ones he sees in the Netherlands.

2010

Kahn delivers a lecture at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, “Can Art Be Taught?” He travels to Turkey. Wolf Kahn Pastels opens at the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, GA.

2011

The main gallery of the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center is named “The Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason Gallery” in honor of their commitment to the institution over its 40-year existence. Additionally, the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center hosts an exhibition of Kahn’s pastels. An expanded second edition of Wolf Kahn by Justin Spring is published by Harry N. Abrams, 15 years after the original publication. It includes a new essay by Karen Wilkin.

2012

Kahn gives a lecture titled “Planning and Spontaneity” at both the Vermont Studio Center and the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center. He celebrates his 85th birthday in Vermont among many friends. An interview with him from Story Preservation Initiative is included in Inspired Lives, airs on New Hampshire Public Radio, and is posted on its website. Kahn is presented with an Outstanding Alumni Professional Achievement Award by the University of Chicago.

2014

Kahn lectures at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, “Control and Letting Go.” A survey exhibition, Six Decades, is held at Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe (now Miles McEnery Gallery).

2017

Kahn receives the U.S. Department of State’s International Medal of Arts. Kahn celebrates his 90th birthday in October.

2019

Kahn, and his wife of sixty-two years, the artist Emily Mason, are each awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Arts from Marlboro College in Vermont. Emily Mason dies on 10 December.

2020

Kahn dies on 15 March at the age of ninety-two. Rizzoli Electa publishes Wolf Kahn: Paintings and Pastels, 2010–2020

2021

The Wolf Kahn Foundation is exclusively represented by Miles McEnery Gallery for the artist’s paintings and pastels, and hosts its first posthumous exhibition, Wolf Kahn: The Last Decade: 2010–2020.

SELECT 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 Arts Center, Little Rock, AR

Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL

Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, NC

Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD

Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, 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

Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH

Canton Museum of Art, Canton, OH

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA

Castellani Art Museum, Niagara University, Lewiston, NY

Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, Nashville, TN

Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME

Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College, 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 College, Wellesley, MA

Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, OH

De Young Museum, San Francisco, CA

Dubuque Museum of Art, Dubuque, IA

Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, 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

Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY

Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK

George Segal Gallery, Montclair State 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, 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, Stanford, CA

The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO

Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion, Champaign, IL

Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Laurel, MS

List Visual Arts Center, MIT, Cambridge, MA

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA

Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, 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, 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 Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

National Academy, New York, NY

National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO

Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, Purchase, NY Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV Newark Museum, Newark, NJ

New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA

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, 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

RISD Museum, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI

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

San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA

Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC

Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, 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

University of Colorado Art Museum, Boulder, CO

University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, NM

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

Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit, NJ

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

AWARDS AND APPOINTMENTS

2019

Marlboro College, Honorary Degree of Doctor of Arts

2017

U.S. Department of State, International Medal of Arts 2012

University of Chicago, Outstanding Alumni Professional Achievement Award 2006

National Academy, Lifetime Achievement Award 2004 Union College, Honorary Degree of Doctor of Fine Arts 2000

Wheaton College, Honorary Degree of Doctor of Fine Arts 1998

Vermont Arts Council, Walter Cerf Medal for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts

1993 – 1996

Vice President for Art, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York 1993

American Artist Achievement Award 1984

American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York, Elected to Membership

1980 – 1985

National Board of College Art Association, Elected to Membership

1966 – 1967

John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship 1962 Fulbright Scholarship

Published on the occasion of

WOLF KAHN

2 February – 11 March 2023

Miles McEnery Gallery 525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011 tel +1 212 445 0051 www.milesmcenery.com

Publication © 2022 Miles McEnery Gallery All rights reserved Essay © 2022 Dr. Maura Reilly

Director of Exhibitions Anastasija Jevtovic, New York, NY

Publications and Archival Assistant Julia Schlank, New York, NY

Special thanks to Ellen McCulloch-Lovell, Mara Williams, and The Wolf Kahn Foundation, Brattleboro, VT.

Artwork Images

© 2022 Wolf Kahn / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

Image on Page 2

Wolf Kahn in his Chelsea Studio, 1995

Photography by Christopher Burke Studio, New York, NY Dan Bradica, New York, NY Jeffrey Sturges, New York, NY

Color separations by Echelon, Los Angeles, CA

Catalogue designed by McCall Associates, New York, NY

ISBN: 978-1-949327-97-7 Cover: South Pond in Sunlight, (detail), 1985 Endsheets: Imaginary Shoreline on a Lake, (detail), 1986