Julian Opie
THE STREET #2, 2020
Lasercut in colors on mounted museum board
18 x 37 x 1 1/2 in
45.7 x 94 x 3.8 cm
Available at Surovek Gallery
The simple, urbane works of London-based artist Julian Opie (b.1958) have a universal appeal.
Opie currently has a solo exhibit of large, sculptural figures at the Palma de Malllorca in Spain and is part of group exhibitions in China, Spain and Poland.
Opie’s works can be found in public art collections around the world, including the Tate, the British Museum, Victoria & Albert, the Arts Council, the British Council and National Portrait Gallery in London, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, ICA in Boston, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Essl Collection in Vienna, IVAM in Spain, the Berardo Collection Museum in Lisbon, The Israel Museum in Jerusalem and the Takamatsu City Museum of Art in Japan.
Julian Opie’s rendering of The Street, available at Surovek Gallery, exemplifies his flair for creating sculptural work that combines motion, color and form and a comforting familiarity that can be recognized by people everywhere.
Wolf Kahn (1927-2020) painted luxurious landscapes of the countryside that surrounded his summer home in Brattleboro, Vermont. Using lush fields of color, Kahn was able to capture the feeling of serenity and restfulness that the land inspired.
Ironically, he captured the mood best when he was back home in his Manhattan studio. “The environment in which my paintings grow best is at Broadway and 12th Street.” Kahn said, “I can see nature most clearly in my studio, undistracted by trees and skies. Art being emotion recollected in tranquility, I constantly find Nature too emotional, and Broadway very tranquil.”
Kahn was born in Stuttgart, Germany. His family was Jewish. Kahn managed to escape to the United States in 1940 at the age of thirteen, where he was reunited with his family. He served in the U.S. Navy after graduating from the High School of Music and Art in New York City.
Wolf Kahn was awarded the 2017 U.S. State Department's International Medal of Arts. His work has been part of the State Department’s Art in Embassies program, which loans work to diplomatic bureaus around the world.
Foreground Pond, a work in pastel, is available at Surovek Gallery. Kahn worked in both oil and pastel to create his unique vision of the world that surrounded him. “What I really believe in is the eye.” Kahn said. “I think you’ve got to get the mind sort of out of the way and trust that the eye will do things far more comprehensively and more interestingly, certainly, than what you can think about. So I always try to get my painting to the point where the painting speaks to me, rather than me speaking to the painting. I have a feeling at that point, you get in touch with things that are truly interesting and truly mean something, because you’re beyond convention, what have you, you know, and normalcy. I’m against normalcy.”
His works can be found in the permanent collection of Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among other fine institutions.
References:
David Ebony. Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason: A Rare Opportunity to Compare and Contrast the Work of Two Very Different Painters. The Brooklyn Rail. February 2021.
