Wolf Kahn

Medal of Arts 2017

Wolf Kahn was awarded the Medal of Art for his longtime contributions to Art in Embassies and cultural diplomacy on January 12, 2017.

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A second-generation New York School artist, Wolf Kahn has built a radiant and beautiful oeuvre since first exhibiting his paintings at the Hansa Gallery, one of New York’s first co-op galleries, nearly sixty years ago. A student of Hans Hofmann and influenced early on by Milton Avery (and the work of James Abbott McNeill Whistler on a trip to Venice), Kahn is known for his unique combination of realism with the expressive immediacy of Abstract Expressionism. His soft, modulated tonalities reveal the additional influence he absorbed from Mark Rothko, Henri Matisse, and Giorgio Morandi. The signature landscapes Kahn began in the late 1960s are grounded in the ethos of his Vermont farm: weathered barns and undulating pastures and tree lines, revealing a spare yet evocative New England aesthetic.