The Radiant Colors of Wolf Kahn’s Landscapes

The artist’s alertness to the coloristic demands of each picture, the ability to respond to the picture’s needs, to feed the color until its appetite is satiated; these are the true measures of a colorist’s talent.

– Wolf Kahn

The Radiant Colors of Wolf Kahn’s Landscapes

Wolf Kahn began using intense colors in his landscapes, in the late 1960s, while on vacation in Deer Isle, Maine. The sweep of the fog, the sea and the sky led him to move away from the monochromatic tones he had been using, to the swaths of radiant colors that he has been using for the last fifty years.

 

Kahn became the mentor of Robert Gamblin, a landscape painter and founder of Gamblin Artists Colors. Gamblin makes high quality oil paints, like Gamblin Conservation Colors, used by conservators and restorers at major museums to repair damaged artwork.

 

Gamblin worked with Wolf Kahn to create a series of paints called Radiants. Radiants are a series of eight high intensity colors, mixed with white, which makes them opaque and vibrant. The colors were taken from Kahn’s color palette.

 

Wolf Kahn Landscapes at Surovek Gallery

Wolf Kahn is one of the most preeminent American artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. His works can be found in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Boca Raton Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum and many other major museums around the world.

 

Wolf Kahn has been recognized with many awards throughout his life, including a Fulbright Scholarship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Award in Art from the American Academy of Arts and letters, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Vermont Council on the Arts and an Outstanding Alumni Professional Achievement Award from the University of Chicago. Last year the US State Department awarded Kahn the International Medal of Art.

 

Please contact us for more information about Magenta Cloud, Sheep Farm on the Great Meadows, Fog Bank or any of the other Wolf Kahn works available at Surovek Gallery.

September 6, 2018