Exhibition of Pastels by Wolf Kahn Opens at the Morris Museum September 11
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9/8/10 Wolf Kahn Pastels, featuring twenty-three pastels on paper, principally of rural Southern scenes, by one of America’s premier landscape painters, opens Saturday, September 11, 2010 at the Morris Museum of Art where it remains on display through Sunday, November 7, 2010. “Wolf Kahn is a master of the difficult medium of pastel and the greatest colorist of our time,” said Kevin Grogan, director of the Morris Museum of Art. “This exhibition highlights the landscape of the South—from barns and cabins to iconic, historic structures–-as well as some city scenes in New Orleans and Augusta, and underscores Wolf Kahn’s unerring instinct for the telling detail. These pastels blend certain signature elements—the combination of the language of abstraction, realism, and breathtaking color—to yield a body of work that is simply like no other.” Born in Germany in 1927, Wolf Kahn has lived in the
United States since 1940. He graduated from the High School
of Music and Art in New York City before enrolling in the
studio school of renowned abstract painter and teacher Hans
Hofmann. Eventually, he became Hofmann’s studio assistant
for two years, after which he received a Bachelor's Degree
from the University of Chicago. His work defies easy categorization. Though steeped in
Hofmann's modernist theories, Kahn developed a style of
landscape painting that is uniquely his own, a style that
employs the language of abstraction—particularly in its
active brushwork and energetic gesture—while employing color
in a way that owes much to other influences, most notably
the work of such early twentieth century French painters as
Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, and Henri Matisse, all of
them renowned colorists. Kahn has this to say of his work:
“[Color] is my primary interest. I am always trying to get
to the danger point, where color either becomes too sweet or
too harsh; too noisy or too quiet.” Color is his signature,
and, though he often seems to push the boundaries daringly,
his use of it is never arbitrary and never less than apt. Kahn has been the recipient of many honors and awards—a
Fulbright Scholarship, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship,
and an Award in Art from the American Academy of Arts and
Letters. He is a member of the National Academy of Design,
as well as the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His
work is included in the permanent collections of most major
American museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the National Academy
Museum, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the
Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.; the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art; and the Morris Museum of Art,
to cite just a few. His work has been the subject of
several books and monographs. One solely dedicated to his
work in pastel was published in 2000. Wolf Kahn's America a
compendium of landscape paintings produced throughout the
United States was published in 2003. The present exhibition celebrates the artist’s
eighty-third birthday. Despite impaired vision, he continues
to produce pastels and paintings that have never been more
richly gestural or luminous. The present exhibition celebrates the artist’s
eighty-third birthday. Despite impaired vision, he continues
to produce pastels and paintings that have never been more
richly gestural or luminous. Related Events Sunday, September 12, 3:15 p.m. Thursday, October 22, noon. The Morris Museum of Art was founded in 1985 and opened to the public in 1992. It is the oldest museum in the country that is devoted to the art and artists of the American South. The museum’s permanent collection holds approximately five thousand works of art that date from the late-eighteenth century to the present. The Morris is open to the public Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m., and on Sunday, noon–5:00 p.m. For more information about the Morris Museum of Art, visit www.themorris.org or call 706-724-7501. |
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