Modern & Contemporary Art (1666) May 14, 2020 EDT, ONLINE ONLY Lot 29

Estimate: $10000 - $15000 (plus Buyer's Premium) Wolf Kahn (American/German, 1927-2020) Behind Sam's (Putney, VT) Signed bottom left, inscribed #53-1976 and titled verso, oil on canvas. Executed in 1976. 14 x 28 in. (35.6 x 71.1cm) Provenance: Private Collection, New York.

NOTE: “Wolf Kahn is to southern Vermont what Winslow Homer is to the coast of Maine, Georgia O’Keeffe to the New Mexico high desert and Claude Monet to the French countryside,” Brattleboro Museum & Art Center director Danny Lichtenfeld said when Kahn won the U.S. State Department’s International Medal of Arts in 2017. “Wolf’s depictions of our barns, fields, trees and hillsides form the prevailing visual impression of our area for people all around the world.” [1]

Born in Stuttgart, Germany, Wolf Kahn immigrated to the United States by way of England in 1939 after his grandmother helped him escape Germany via the Kindertransport program. Under the GI Bill, he studied with Abstract Expressionist painter Hans Hofmann, and later worked as Hofmann’s studio assistant.

After a brief time studying for his Bachelor’s degree at the University of Chicago, Kahn returned to painting full time, and in 1953, enjoyed his first solo exhibition at the Hansa Gallery, a cooperative gallery organized by Kahn and other former students of Hofmann. These early paintings of both interior and exterior scenes drew strong attention from critics and collectors alike, yet Kahn’s focus soon turned primarily to landscapes.

Kahn married fellow artist Emily Mason, and the two bought a hillside farm in Vermont in 1968. They would spend summers and falls there, and winters and springs in New York City. Mr. Kahn and Ms. Mason both found inspiration in the colors and landscapes of Vermont. “I am attracted by the light, by the shifting horizons, by the variety and gentleness of the landscapes,” he told The San Diego Union-Tribune in 1983, when he had his first major West Coast solo exhibition at the San Diego Museum of Art. [2]

Titled after a specific location in Vermont, the present example depicts a few buildings nestled amongst trees, rocks and grass, all of which are given equal importance in the composition. Lime, yellow, soft blues and cool greens together comprise a harmonious scene that embodies the gentleness of landscape of which the artist was so fond and well celebrated. Wolf Kahn died in March of this year at his home in New York at the age of 92.

[1] Danny Lichtenfeld “Vermont Artist Wolf Kahn Shows His True Colors” qtd. in Kevin O’Connor, VTDigger.org (Montpelier, VT) 18 June 2017 https://vtdigger.org/2017/06/18/vermont-artist-wolf-kahn- shows-true-colors/ [2] Marilyn Hagberg, “Kahn puts his colors to work,” The San Diego Union, 8 Dec. 1983, C-9.