WOLF KAHN
THE FOREST FOR THE TREES
MAYA FRODEMAN GALLERY
THE FOREST FOR THE TREES
The preeminent colorist of a generation, it is impossible to understate Wolf Kahn’s role as a maverick, a painter who swam against the tides of his time. A secondgeneration New School artist following the lions of American Abstraction such as Rothko, Pollock, and de Kooning, among others, Wolf Kahn broke rank by returning to representational painting, mainly of landscapes.
A one-time lumberjack in his youth, Wolf Kahn’s enthusiasm for trees as subject matter resounds throughout this exhibition. Throughout his life, Kahn sought to translate landscapes, most often the heavily treed forested hills and valleys of the American
Northeast, into light and color. Sometimes painterly, sometimes punctuated and jabbing, the viewer is brought into each brightly hued copse of trees and is captivated.
The trees themselves in Wolf Kahn’s paintings, however, differ radically in execution. Large swaths of color create the impression of a treed ridge in one painting; a chaotic tangle of vegetation brings the viewer into a weblike cobble of sunlit branches in the next. Trees become variegated vertical lines and branches short, terse horizontal stabs of color. We present a varied curation of large and small paintings and works on paper that display Kahn’s breadth as a painter of trees.
Christopher Burke
MEADOW BORDERED BY A BROOK , 1984
Oil on canvas
44 x 70 inches
HOW LOW THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN II , 2002
Oil on canvas
42 x 66 inches
WHITE ROOF, WHITE SKY , 2006
Oil on canvas
26 x 22 inches
LONG LANDSCAPE , 2003
Oil on canvas
43 x 75 inches
ACROSS THE VALLEY (MIDSIZE VERSION) BROKEN , 2005
Oil on canvas
42 x 52 inches
HOUSE ACROSS THE MEADOW , 2013
Oil on canvas
32 x 52 inches
DARKENING IN THE CORNER , 2010
Oil on canvas
30 x 30 inches
DARK GREEN CORNER , 2015
Oil on canvas
20 x 22 inches
WHITE CABIN AMONG BLACK TREES , 2014
Oil on canvas
18 x 26 inches
ON FLYING POINT ROAD , 2013
Oil on canvas
22 x 26 inches
CATTAILS II , 2003
Oil on canvas
10 x 16 inches
IN THE BACK OF THE VERMONT STUDIO CENTER , 2001
Oil on canvas
52 x 66 inches
TREES BEFORE A BEAVER POND , 2006
Oil on canvas
34 x 52 inches
CHEERFUL , 2018
Oil on canvas
22 x 30 inches
ON THE BANK OF THE GIHON RIVER , 2005
Oil on canvas
40 x 42 inches
STRIP OF YELLOW PASTURE IN WEST BRATTLEBORO , 2005
Oil on canvas
36 x 52 inches
YOUNG TREES BY THE ROAD , 2018
Oil on canvas
24 x 26 inches
YELLOW SHORELINE , 2009
Oil on canvas
16 x 28 inches
TRYING TO OBLITERATE ORANGE , 2010
Oil on canvas
24 x 18 inches
SCENE IN HAWAII , 2006
Pastel on paper
29 x 41 inches
A LIGHT BLUE SKY , 2006
Pastel on paper
30 x 40 inches
RED EARTH , 2014
Pastel on paper
22 x 30 inches
ACROSS HALLIDAY BROOK ROAD (LARGE VERSION), 2014
Pastel on paper
22 x 30 inches
BRILLIANT LANDSCAPE, 1991
Pastel on paper
21 x 29 inches
GREEN/BROWN FOREGROUND, 2012
Pastel on paper
20 x 26 inches
TRANSLUCENT TREE LINE, 2008
Pastel on paper
20 x 25 inches
GREEN ABOUT A POND, 2010
Pastel on paper
17 x 21 inches
DARK TRIANGLE IN THE FALL, 2004
Pastel on paper
11 x 14 inches
PURPLE POND, 2015
Pastel on paper
11 x 14 inches
14 inches
RED EARTH, 2015
Pastel on paper
11 x
FOLIAGE UPHILL, 2008
Pastel on paper
11 x 14 inches
WHITE-TAILED DEER, 2014
Pastel on paper
11 x 14 inches
SUN ON THE FAR HILLS, 2017
Pastel on paper
9 x 12 inches
AGAINST RED/ORANGE, 2015
Pastel on paper
9 x 12 inches
BARN IN SOUTHAMPTON, 2012
OBSOLETE
Pastel on paper
9 x 12 inches
9 x 11 1/2 inches
YOUNG TREES IN A MEADOW II, 2016
Pastel on paper
9 x 11 1/2 inches
DARK RED HORIZON, 2016
Pastel on paper
x 11 1/2 inches
PALE PURPLE SKY/DARK PURPLE GROUND, 2016
Pastel on paper
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MAYA FRODEMAN GALLERY
