Wolf Kahn Quotes from OBIT

Wolf Kahn, celebrated painter of resplendent landscapes, dies at 92
Mr. Kahn, shown here with his painting “Uphill,” was renowned for the resplendent colors of his pastels. (Courtesy of Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY)
By
Emily Langer
March 19, 2020 at 4:02 PM EDT

Wolf Kahn, an artist who was evacuated from Nazi Germany as a child and settled in the United States, where he became renowned for his resplendent landscapes depicting beauty and permanence in an often uncertain world, died March 15 at his home in New York City. He was 92.

“After all, landscape is something that might be searching for roots,” he said in an oral history in the late 1970s with the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art. He added that “nature, which is unchanging,” gives one “solidity.”

“My choice of color is dictated by tact and decorum, stretched by an unholy desire to be outrageous,” he once told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “I want the color to be surprising to people without being offensive.

“He brings back from his survey of nature colors — magentas, purples, orange-pinks — that must be seen to be believed,” novelist John Updike wrote in an introduction to Mr. Kahn’s book “Wolf Kahn’s America: An Artist’s Travels” (2003), one of several collections of his works. “We do believe them; his images keep a sense of place and moment, though what strikes us first is their abstract gorgeousness. Gorgeous, but they do not leave the earth.”

“The environment in which my paintings grow best is at Broadway and 12th Street. I can see nature most clearly in my studio, undistracted by trees and skies,” he said in an interview quoted by the Forward. “Art being emotion recollected in tranquility, I constantly find Nature too emotional, and Broadway very tranquil.”

“My class bias comes from that, I suppose,” Mr. Kahn said. “I’ve always been very dubious about the rich, and much more in favor of . . . the less fortunate.”

Before attending the university, Mr. Kahn had been a studio assistant to Hans Hofmann, a German-born abstract expressionist who became a mentor.

“He didn’t believe in systems,” Mr. Kahn told the publication Vermont Arts & Living. “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.”

“I have my own system for color, but I’ve never formalized it,” he added. “It all goes through my intuition instead of any knowledge. In fact I don’t believe in knowledge.”

Mr. Kahn continued painting until the end of his life, once remarking to the program “CBS Sunday Morning” that “as I get older, the blue gets bluer and the yellow gets yellower.”

“I hope to live to a very ripe old age,” he quipped, “because . . . who can tell how yellow the yellow [will] become?”

Art is “about intuition, imagination and fantasy,” Mr. Kahn told the Vermont arts publication. “Once you have your nose pointed in the right direction, you can start smelling something. It’s not about expertise. I don’t believe in it. I believe in innocence of spirit.”

Obit