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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 National 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., and Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles, CA.
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