Throwback Thursday: Wolf Kahn

Image Credits: Gallery views of Wolf Kahn: Barns, on view at the Blowing Rock Art & History Museum in 2014. On loan from the artist and the Jerald Melberg Gallery, Charlotte, NC.

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Here's a throwback honoring Wolf Kahn, an artist that some of you may remember from the exhibition we had back in 2014. Others may also know him from exhibitions you've seen of his work elsewhere.

Sadly, Wolf Kahn passed away recently, so we wanted to give him a shout out. We were honored to be able to host a series of his work from our friends at the Jerald Melberg Gallery in Charlotte, NC titled Wolf Kahn: Barns back in 2014.

Wolf Kahn began painting barns in 1966 and created a body of artwork centered around the form of the barn. According to the artist, he was drawn to the way barns interact with their environments. He payed close attention to the way colors and textures relate to those of the surrounding landscape. He also observed closely the interplay between the landscape and the barn’s size, position, and function. Kahn’s barns tend to be simple in form rather than highly realistic, and they are heavily influenced by the Color Field movement.

“The simpler the issue, the better. When a work becomes too descriptive, too much involved with what’s actually out there, then there’s nothing else going on in the painting… When I look at a barn, it is never the barn by itself that engages me, but the way it grows out of the land, the way the sky and trees surround it, and how the horizon is interrupted by the barn’s silhouette."
- Wolf Kahn

Did you get to see this exhibition six years ago? Do any of his paintings remind you of rural scenes around the High Country?

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If you'd like to learn more about Wolf Kahn and see a video of him with our friend, Jerald Melberg, check out this article released by the NY Times

You can read more about this and other past exhibitions here.