1903/1906-1950
Hilde Band lost her parents during the upheavals of World War I and she immigrated to the United States in the early 1920s, following her future husband Stephen F. Kayn, a childhood sweetheart.
Hilde attended the Art Students League in New York and studied under George Bridgman and George Luks. Her first exhibition at Argent Galleries in 1933 was not received favorably by the critics, but by the 1940s her work was winning major awards and examples of it began to enter major collections. In 1943, for example, the Toledo Museum purchased her painting New Moon. In that same year she won the gold medal at the 30th Annual Exhibition of the Allied Artists of America for Left Behind and an honorable mention at the Carnegie International for Sorrow. In 1944, her painting Consolation was sold by Milch Gallery to the Butler Art Institute, Youngstown, Ohio; two years later she won an anonymous purchase prize in the National Academy's annual for Good Samaritan; and in 1948 she earned the Stroud Prize at the annual exhibition of the American Watercolor Society.
Kayn resided in New York City, but died in a Toledo hospital after being taken ill while visiting the Toledo Museum. After her death, in March 1953, a series of her paintings relating to the dance were shown at Milch Galleries.
Much of Kayn's work is comprised of grand romantic constructions with groups of figures clustered into different activities in a setting of classical antiquity often in ruins or under attack. In these it would seem that some great historical event were being depicted, but the moment is never identified in the title. The purpose seems to be to express the passion and emotion of the moment exalted beyond any specific context. Kayn executes these ideas with appropriate vigor, using a swift, expressive brushstroke, loaded brush, rich impasto and a light palette.
Hilde attended the Art Students League in New York and studied under George Bridgman and George Luks. Her first exhibition at Argent Galleries in 1933 was not received favorably by the critics, but by the 1940s her work was winning major awards and examples of it began to enter major collections. In 1943, for example, the Toledo Museum purchased her painting New Moon. In that same year she won the gold medal at the 30th Annual Exhibition of the Allied Artists of America for Left Behind and an honorable mention at the Carnegie International for Sorrow. In 1944, her painting Consolation was sold by Milch Gallery to the Butler Art Institute, Youngstown, Ohio; two years later she won an anonymous purchase prize in the National Academy's annual for Good Samaritan; and in 1948 she earned the Stroud Prize at the annual exhibition of the American Watercolor Society.
Kayn resided in New York City, but died in a Toledo hospital after being taken ill while visiting the Toledo Museum. After her death, in March 1953, a series of her paintings relating to the dance were shown at Milch Galleries.
Much of Kayn's work is comprised of grand romantic constructions with groups of figures clustered into different activities in a setting of classical antiquity often in ruins or under attack. In these it would seem that some great historical event were being depicted, but the moment is never identified in the title. The purpose seems to be to express the passion and emotion of the moment exalted beyond any specific context. Kayn executes these ideas with appropriate vigor, using a swift, expressive brushstroke, loaded brush, rich impasto and a light palette.
