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WOLF KAHN
THE LAST DECADE: 2010 - 2020
7 January - 13 February 2021
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Miles McEnery Gallery is pleased to announce a memorial exhibition of curated paintings by Wolf Kahn.
The Last Decade: 2010 - 2020 features paintings from the final decade of Kahn’s life. The exhibition will open on 7 January at 525 West 22nd Street and will remain on view through 13 February 2021.
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"Kahn’s paintings reveal forceful archetypes of the American landscape in its neglected corners, quiet tributes to the untold stories of unseen occupants, past and present. In so doing, his paintings remind us of our own manifold connections to the land—even those of us for whom it is seen mainly from the window of a car or a train, or indeed on the wall of a Manhattan gallery."
- Alex J. Taylor, Excerpt from "Wolf Kahn and the Structure of Landscape"
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“I want people to participate freely in my paintings... to connect my paintings as directly as possible to their surroundings."
- Wolf Kahn
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Review by James Panero
THE CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
"'Wolf Kahn: The Last Decade 2010–2020' looks to the artist’s pastel-like landscapes, oils that imbue New York School abstraction with the warmth of Pierre Bonnard. 'Emily Mason: Chelsea Paintings' opens a window onto the sunny compositions the artist developed in her New York loft, in which she worked since 1979. Taken together, the paired exhibitions honor two artists, married for sixty-two years and both recently deceased, who maintained a connection with Tenth Street and, in their enduring work and long life, each other." - James Panero
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"I try not to have a process simply because I really believe in spontaneity, and I think what influences me the most is the painting that I'm in process of working on."
-Wolf Kahn, 2019
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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 & Art in New York, after which he spent time in the Navy. Under the GI Bill, he studied with renowned teacher and Abstract Expressionist painter Hans Hofmann, later becoming Hofmann’s studio assistant. In 1950, he enrolled in the University of Chicago. He graduated in 1951 with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
After completing his degree in only one year, Kahn decided to return to being a full-time artist. He and other former Hofmann students established the Hansa Gallery, a cooperative gallery where Kahn had his first solo exhibition. In 1956, he joined the Grace Borgenicht Gallery, where he exhibited regularly until 1995. Kahn received a Fulbright Scholarship, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, an Award in Art from the Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Medal of Arts from the U.S. State Department.
Traveling extensively, he painted landscapes in Egypt, Greece, Hawaii, Italy, Kenya, Maine, Mexico, and New Mexico. He spent his summers and autumns in Vermont on a hillside farm with his wife, painter Emily Mason.
The unique blend of Realism and formal discipline of Color Field painting sets the work of Wolf Kahn apart. Kahn is an artist who embodies a synthesis of artistic traits - the modern abstract training of Hans Hofmann, the palette of Matisse, Rothko’s sweeping bands of color, the atmospheric qualities of American Impressionism. The fusion of color, spontaneity and representation has produced a rich and expressive body of work.
Wolf Kahn regularly exhibits at galleries and museums across North America. His work may be found in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; The Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.; The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, among other institutions.
Wolf Kahn died March 15, 2020, in New York, NY.
