WOLF KAHN is one of the most important colorists
working in America today. Born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1927, Wolf Kahn
immigrated to the United States by way of England in 1940. In 1945 he
graduated from the High School of Music and Art in New York after which
he spent time in the Navy. Under the GI Bill he studied with the
well-known teacher and abstract expressionist Hans Hoffman, becoming
Hofmann's studio assistant. In 1950 he enrolled in the University of
Chicago from which he graduated in 1951 with a BA.
Having completed his baccalaureate degree in only
one year, Kahn was determined to become a professional artist. He and
other former Hofmann students established The Hansa, a cooperative
gallery where he had his first one man show. In 1956 he joined the
Grace Borgenicht Gallery where he exhibited regularly until 1995. Mr.
Kahn has received a Fulbright Scholarship, a John Simon Guggenheim
Fellowship, and an Award in Art from the American Academy of Arts and
Letters. He is a member of the Nation Academy of Design, as well as the
American Academy of Arts and Letters and has recently completed an
appointment to the New York City Art Commission. Traveling extensively,
he has painted landscapes in such diverse locales as Maine, Mexico,
Italy, Greece, Kenya, New Mexico, Hawaii and Egypt. He spends his
summers and autumns in Vermont on a hillside farm, which he and his
wife, the painter Emily Mason, have owned since 1968. They have two
daughters, Cecily and Melany. Cecily Kahn is a painter, married to the
painter David Kapp.
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, 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. Wolf Kahn regularly exhibits at galleries and museums across
North America. Selected museum collections include Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York, NY, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY,
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.,
Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles, CA.