TitlePond in November
Artist
Wolf Kahn
(1927 - 2020)
Date1977
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 29 × 36 in.
Framed: 32 × 39 × 3 in.
SignedSigned lower right: "W. Kahn"
SubmissionANA diploma presentation, February 4, 1980
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, Gift of Donald S. Crook, accepted as artist's ANA diploma presentation, February 4, 1980
Object number1980.15
Label TextBorn to a Jewish family in Stuttgart, Germany, Wolf Kahn escaped persecution in his home country through the Kindertransport rescue missions, and moved to England before soon joining his family in the U.S. He attended the High School of Music and Art in New York. After a year of service in the United States Navy, Kahn returned to New York and began his artistic studies in classes given by Stuart Davis and Hans Jelinek at the New School for Social Research. It was his study with Hans Hofmann in New York and in Provincetown, Massachusetts, however, between 1947 and 1949 that would have a lasting impact on him.In New York Kahn began to exhibit his paintings, initially with the cooperative Hansa Gallery of which he was a participant founder, and later with a long series of one-man exhibitions presented by the Grace Borgenicht Gallery. For the past twenty years his time has been more consistently divided between New York and Vermont, which is a primary source of his radiant and chromatic landscapes.
"Pond in November exhibits" a relatively subdued monochromatic palette for the artist. Kahn's exposure to the painters of the New York School in the 1950s had a tremendous impact on him and he has carried this into his landscape painting. The artist recalled that it was Mark Rothko who encouraged him "to carry the essential idea of radiance . . . into the way I view the problems of landscape." Pond in November is a synthetic landscape in which the artist has combined many different places into one composition.
