Wolf Kahn : Painting and Pastels, 2010-2020

A celebration of the work of the beloved American artist Wolf Kahn (b. 1927)

This volume focuses on the vivid colours of his luscious landscapes made in the past ten years. A refugee from Nazi Germany, Kahn immigrated to the U.S. in 1940, and after settling in New York he studied with influential artist and teacher Hans Hofmann. His radiant hues, tangy colour contrasts, and pervasive sense of light combine realism with the discipline of colour-field painting and place him at the forefront of American representational artists. This book features a generous selection of paintings and pastels that showcase his bold, freewheeling style and feature a unique blend of realism and abstraction.

During the past decade of his long and accomplished career, Kahn has traded in the often-lyrical palette of his earlier landscapes for an increasingly brash and assertive chromatic vision evidenced in electric hues ranging from acid yellow and hazard orange to saturated thalo blue. His most recent large-scale oils, depicting his favoured subjects of barns and tree-lined fields and rivers, abound with visual energy. Art historian Sasha Nicholas puts Kahn in context with other artists and situates his recent work within his broader career.

William C. Agee and Kahn discuss his process and most recent paintings

Details