Encompassing a distinguished array of works carefully curated over the course of decades, this important Private Pennsylvania Collection offers a glimpse of American art in its infancy. At the turn of the century, the nation began to establish its own voice and style through institutions such as the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (Philadelphia), the American Academy of the Fine Arts (New York), and The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), ushering in what is often referred to as the “American Century.” Beginning in the early 1800s with the Western Expansion and the Louisiana Purchase and continuing through the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution, the burgeoning United States was becoming a political and cultural world power. Its artists were exploring the untamed lands of the Northeast, establishing the Hudson River School and American Impressionism while also utilizing newfound wealth and travel opportunities to study abroad in Europe, bringing French and English influences back home where they were shaped into a style that was uniquely American. Through the establishment of The National Academy of Design (New York) and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, these movements flourished and encouraged collaboration and conversation between artists, laying the foundation for American Art as it progressed through the 20th century and into today.
Wolf Kahn 1927–2020
Born in Germany, Wolf Kahn immigrated to the United States in 1940 and attended the High School of Music & Art in New York before joining the Navy. Thanks to the GI Bill, after his time in the military he was able to study with renowned Abstract Expressionist painter Hans Hofmann and would later become Hofmann’s studio assistant. Khan then attended the University of Chicago, graduating in 1951 with a Bachelor of Arts degree and promptly dedicating himself to becoming a full-time artist. He and several of Hofmann’s other students established a cooperative gallery, Hansa Gallery, where Kahn held his first public exhibition. It was not long before he joined Grace Borgenicht Gallery in 1956, where he exhibited regularly until 1995.
Khan and his wife, painter Emily Mason, married in 1957 and traveled extensively in addition to maintaining a farm in Vermont where they spent the summer and fall every year. The myriad of locales he visited—from Egypt to Greece, Italy to Kenya—inspired his unique and colorful landscape paintings that reflected a fusion of disparate influences: Hans Hofmann’s abstraction, Matisse’s palette, Rothko’s application of color, and American Impressionist atmosphere. Khan was the recipient of many prestigious awards including a Fulbright Scholarship, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, an Award in Art from the Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Medal of Arts from the U.S. State Department. His work was, and continues to be, exhibited at galleries and museums across the country and can be found in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among many others.
