Wolf kahn
Born in Stuttgart, Germany, Wolf Kahn (1927–2020) emigrated with his family, by way of England, to the United States in 1940. In 1945, he graduated from the High School of Music & Art in New York City before serving in the Navy. Following his service, he returned to study with Hans Hofmann and ultimately became Hofmann’s studio assistant. In 1950, he enrolled in the University of Chicago and graduated in 1951 with a bachelor of arts degree.
He traveled across America and worked as a lumberjack in Oregon before returning to New York to paint. He became part of the vanguard downtown scene, later saying that the best thing that came out of the Artists’ Club was meeting his wife, the painter Emily Mason, there.
Although he came of age in the era of Abstract Expressionism, Kahn turned to nature for stimulus. He traveled extensively and eventually divided his time between New York and a hillside farm in southeastern Vermont. The woods, fields, and geometric farm buildings are reflected both directly and obliquely in Kahn’s work, most obviously in his use of color and recurrent motifs. Kahn has received numerous awards, including a Fulbright Scholarship, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Award in Art from the Academy of Arts and Letters. His work is in private and public collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art; the Smithsonian American Art Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others.
