BRATTLEBORO — Thanks to Wolf Kahn, the hills, forests, farms, and barns of southern Vermont may be seen in many of the world's finest art galleries, museums, and private collections.
For nearly 50 years the beloved landscape painter, a leading figure in contemporary American art, has spent summers on a hillside farm in West Brattleboro. He has traveled the back roads and unmarked lanes of Windham County with pastels and sketchbook in tow, depicting the landscape in a signature style that hovers between abstraction and figuration.
On Saturday, Oct. 11, at 7 p.m., a week after his 87th birthday, Kahn will give a talk entitled “Control and Letting Go” at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC). Reservations are $10 for the general public, $5 for BMAC members. A book and memorabilia signing will follow.
Kahn's rich, expressive body of work represents a synthesis of his modern abstract training with Hans Hofmann, the palette of Matisse, Rothko's sweeping bands of color, and the atmospheric qualities of American Impressionism.
In an essay accompanying a 2011 exhibit of Kahn's work, BMAC Chief Curator Mara Williams wrote, “His images are palpably about place and yet they transcend mere description. For more than half a century, this modern master has balanced the sensuous qualities of color and light with a relatively stark geometry of form, giving free reign to complex investigations of perception and of place."
Kahn regularly exhibits at galleries and museums across North America. His work may be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Hirshhorn Museum and the National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C., and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California.