Image Source: VERMONTARTSLIVING.COM WOLF KAHN
1927-2020
Fleeing German anti-Semitism, the family ended up in the United States. Although Kahn graduated the University of Chicago with a Bachelor of Arts, his real training came from his mentor, the great abstract expressionist Hans Hofmann, who was his teacher in New York.
“He was a great painter and a wonderful teacher,” Kahn said. “And I lived with him. He was German and spoke an English, which was almost un-understandable. He didn’t believe in systems. He said at some point some genius would arise who would know how to systematize color, but until then you have to use your intuition. There were all kinds of color theories, but Hoffman didn’t believe in any of them.”
Source: vermontartsliving.com “A fortunate life: Morning coffee with artists Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason.” Fall issue, 2017, by Joyce Marcel.
WOLF KAHN BIOGRAPHY
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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. Kahn married the artist Emily Mason in 1957. Their marriage lasted sixty-two years until Emily’s death in December 2019, just a few months before his passing. The pair lived and worked between New York City and W. Brattleboro, Vermont.
Wolf Kahn regularly exhibited 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 and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA.
Kahn died in 2020 in New York, at the age of 92.
Source: www.wolfkahn.com