Wolf Kahn

Wolf Kahn will be turning 92 in October. He is dealing with macular degeneration, and can no longer read or drive, but he can still paint and work with pastels. "The older I get," he says, "the more yellow a yellow becomes, the bluer a blue becomes, and that gives me hope for the future." Kahn still paints almost every day. He and his wife, artist Emily Mason, divide their time between their home in New York and their summer-through-fall studios in Vermont.

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.

Wolf Kahn has been awarded the 2017 U.S. State Department’s International Medal of Arts. Kahn's work has been part of the State Department's Art in Embassies program, which loans work to diplomatic bureaus around the world. Wolf Kahn received the 2017 U.S. State Department’s International Medal of Arts. Photo by Melany Kahn At age 90, [...]