Wolf Kahn

Celebrated for his vibrant landscapes and masterful use of colour, Wolf Kahn was part of the second generation of the New York School of Abstract Expressionists. A unique blend of realism and formal discipline of Colour Field painting forms the German American painter’s artistic practice, vividly rendering expansive visions of the natural world.

Kahn was born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1927. He immigrated to the United States in 1940. After graduating from the High School of Music & Art in New York, Kahn joined the US Navy. Under the GI Bill, he trained under the influential Abstract Expressionist painter Hans Hofmann at his School of Fine Arts. There, Kahn studied with artists such as Felix Pasilis and Jan Müller, before travelling to Provincetown to become Hofmann’s studio assistant.

It was under Hofmann’s influence that Khan began applying the abstract aesthetics of Colour Field painting to large-scale landscapes. Kahn’s works became more vibrant over time, striking a balance between vivid, almost neon, colours and paler hues in a way that is reflective of nature.

Wolf Kahn net fellow artist Emily Mason at the Artist’s Club in New York in 1956. They spent a summer along with Mark Rothko, Milton Avery and his wife Sally in Provincetown. Kahn and Mason married in Venice in 1957 and shared a studio in Giudecca before returning to New York in 1959.

Immersed in the New York art circles of the mid-20th century, the couple began collecting works by their contemporaries. Their private art collection reflects and celebrates their relationships with other artists, including Georgia O’Keeffe, Richard Diebenkorn, Milton Avery, Lee Bontecou, Robert Motherwell, Hans Hofmann, Wayne Thiebaud, and more. In 2021 Christie’s sold their collection for a total of US$8,712,000.

Throughout his lifetime, Wolf Kahn travelled extensively, painting landscapes in Egypt, Greece, Hawaii, Italy, Kenya, Maine, Mexico and New Mexico. Kahn’s oeuvre synthesises the artist’s greatest influences and relationships, combining the modern abstraction of Hans Hofmann, the palette of Matisse, Rothko’s sweeps of colour and the sense of atmosphere of American Impressionism.

Wolf Kahn died in 2020 at the age of 92 in New York. Today, his works can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and other major international institutions. In 2021 Christie’s sold his 1960 work Atlantic Highlands for a world auction record price of US$212,500.