Wolf Kahn

Kahn was a resident of both New York City and, during the summer and autumn, West Brattleboro, Vermont.

Wolf Kahn studied at University of Chicago, High School of Music & Art and Hans Hoffman School of Fine Art. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is painting and visual art activity. Places of work recorded in the authority are New York City. Work by Wolf Kahn is recorded in the collections of Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and Yale University Art Gallery. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship.

• Name — Wolf Kahn • Birth Name — Hans Wolfgang Kahn • Born — 4 October 1927 • Birthplace — Stuttgart, Germany • Died — 15 March 2020 • Field — Painting, Pastels, Printmaking • Training — Hans Hofmann University of Chicago (AB) • Website — http: wolfkahn.com • Spouse — Emily Mason

• Illustration — Light Grove, pastel on paper, 1960 Wolf Kahn was born in 1927 in Stuttgart, Germany, the fourth child of Emil and Nellie Budge Kahn. Kahn's father was a notable figure in the music world. He was a musician, composer, conductor, and teacher. Kahn's family was Jewish. In 1933, Kahn's father lost his appointment with the Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra when Adolf Hitler came into power and, with increasing antisemitism sweeping Germany, he and his second wife left with Kahn's three siblings for the United States. Wolf was sent to live with his grandmother, Anna Kahn, in Frankfurt, at the age of three. He stated that he began drawing at the age of four. In 1937, the summer of his 11th birthday, his grandmother signed him up for private art lessons with Miss von Joeden. He drew every day and was inspired by military pageantry, Napoleonic Wars and prominent historical figures including Adolph Menzel and Frederick the Great. In 1939, when Kahn was 12 years old, his grandmother arranged for him to leave Germany for England to live with a host family, first with the John Wade family and then with the Purvis Family. As quotas for immigrant applications in the United States changed, Kahn was able to reunite with his family in New York City in 1940 at the age of 13. In 1942, Kahn was accepted for his sophomore year at the High School of Music and Art in New York City. His drawings morphed into caricatures. Kahn cited David Low and Thomas Nast as his favorite cartoonists. His first job was graphics editor of the school newspaper, The Overtone. He graduated in 1945. After a year in the U.S. Navy after high school, Kahn first attended the New School to study painting under Stuart Davis. With the aid of the GI Bill, he was able to continue his studies with Abstract Expressionist Hans Hofmann at the Hans Hofmann School. He became Hofmann’s studio assistant by the summer of 1947 at Hofmann's Provincetown, Massachusetts, studio. In 1949, Kahn was accepted into the University of Chicago's Hutchins Program, where he completed a bachelor's degree in eight months. In the early 1950s he had a brief romantic relationship with designer and curator Sara Penn. In 1956, he met fellow painter Emily Mason, whom he later joined in Venice, Italy. They married there in March 1957 at the municipal building near the Rialto Bridge, witnessed by strangers and friends including filmmaker Tinto Brass. In 1958 the couple returned to New York City where Mason gave birth to their first daughter Cecily in 1959. In 1963 the family returned to Italy. Their daughter Melany was born in Rome in 1964. In 1968 the couple bought a farm in Brattleboro, Vermont, where they continued to summer. Kahn died on March 15, 2020, at the age of 92.

Kahn worked in oil and pastel. His works usually cover the subject of landscapes and his own personal vision of nature. His convergence of light and color has been described as combining "pictorial landscapes and painterly abstraction".

Kahn's very first exhibition was a group show titled, New Provincetown '47, curated by Clement Greenberg at the Seligmann Gallery on 57th Street in New York. The next exhibition would be self-organized by Kahn titled 813 Broadway in 1951. This was followed by a group exhibition in the fall of 1952 at the Hansa Gallery Cooperative, one of a few Hofmann student spinoffs. His first one-man solo exhibition would follow in 1953, also at Hansa Gallery, after a summer trip to Louisiana where he visited his art professor brother, Peter. A real break came after living and painting in Tepoztlan, Mexico, in a studio space afforded by Mrs. Norman. Kahn returned to New York City with an offer to join Grace Borgenicht Gallery in 1955. Her gallery had been in existence on 57th Street since May 1951. In 1960, Kahn accepted a position as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Around this same time, his work was included in a major exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art titled Young America 1960: 30 Painters under 36. Until his death, Kahn remained very active, still creating new work and exhibiting multiple times per year. In Winter of 2017, Kahn celebrated his 90th birthday with an exhibition of over fifty recent paintings at Miles McEnery Gallery (formerly Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe).