May Issue 2001
Hickory Museum of Art in Hickory, NC, Features the Colorful World Of Wolf Kahn
With hot pink skies,
red trees and grass in shades of purple and blue, landscapes by
American artist Wolf Kahn straddle the line between fantasy and
reality.
A 50-year retrospective of Kahn's pastel drawings on view at the Hickory Museum of Art, in Hickory, NC, explores the artist's colorful world and celebrates his experiments with the traditional landscape. Organized by Jerald Melberg Gallery of Charlotte, NC, the exhibition remains at HMA through June 10.
Wolf Kahn: Fifty Years of Pastels includes 72 works by Kahn (1927 - ), who is known and revered for his pastel drawings. The artist describes pastels as "the dust on butterflies' wings" and has said that experiments with the medium often influence his oil paintings.
In a catalogue accompanying the exhibition, Annette Blaugrund, Director of the National Academy of Design, writes, "Pastel has often been characterized as a secondary medium, but in the hands of Wolf Kahn, who knows how to take full advantage of its velvety texture and wide range of colors, it is transformed into a major medium...Wolf's spontaneity and freshness of color has metamorphosed the expressive possibilities of pastel into a medium for the 21st century."
Ponderosa Pines, 1999
Barns in
Sagaponak, 2000
Kahn came of age in the heyday of the New York School artists, a group that helped transform American art into a worldwide force to be reckoned with.
"One of Kahn's most important teachers, Hans Hoffman, also was the most influential teacher of the New York School artists," said Hickory Museum of Art Curator Mary Agnes Beach. "Hoffman's teachings emphasized formal elements in art - line, color, texture, and shape - and discouraged artists from representing the 'seen' world in their work."
Barn Silhouette,
1972
While many artists under Hoffman's influence painted in a completely abstract manner, Kahn used Hoffman's lessons to create his own unique style.
"Kahn places great emphasis on the design and color of the work itself. In some cases, this makes his work more abstract," said Beach. "But even in an abstract work, he illustrates a barn or an outdoor scene that we recognize and enjoy for its associations with nature and beauty."
Emily in Venezia,
1958
Whether an image is "realistic" or "abstract" depends on the severity of Kahn's stroke and the colors at play in the scene. In one landscape, his river, grass and sky are traditionally represented with clear boundaries and classic shades of blue and green. But in another work, the scene is blatantly abstract. Kahn creates a "lagoon" from four stacked, triangular patches of color: blue (the sky), gray (a mass of rock), blue (water) and beige (sand).
With this technique, Kahn allows color to become a subject all its own: The background actually becomes the foreground, with the landscape's trees or grass as the secondary attraction. The vitality of the scene springs not from Kahn's green grass or brown trees, but from his fiery, orange-and-magenta sunset that consumes most of the canvas.
For more info check our NC Institutional Gallery listings or call the museum at 828/327-8576 or at (http://hickorymuseumofart.org).
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