8 - Wolf Kahn (1927-2020) | German-American

Wolf Kahn (1927-2020) | German-American Lilac Haze, 1994 Oil on Canvas Signed: Signed ‘W Kahn’ (lower right); titled, dated and numbered ‘#21A. 1994 Lilac Haze’ on the stretcher bar; dated and numbered ‘#1994 / 21A’ on the reverse of the canvas. Dimensions: Artwork: 56 × 74.5 cm | 22 × 29.3 in Provenance: Private Collection, New York. Acquired from the above in the 2000s; thence by descent. Condition: Oil on canvas, unlined, on the artist’s stretcher with a central vertical bar. The paint layer is stable; minor rubbing to the pale band along the upper edge, a little fine craquelure in the impasto of the lower right corner around the signature, and light surface dirt. The unpainted tacking margins are frayed, as is usual with the artist’s canvases; unframed. Please contact us to request a detailed Condition Report. Conditions of Sale: All lots are sold as is, in the condition described. The condition summary is given as a courtesy; a full condition report is available on request before the sale. Attributions are governed by our Terms and Conditions. All enquiries must be made before bidding; no further information can be provided after the sale. By placing a bid you confirm that you have read and accept our Terms and Conditions in full, as set out in the terms of this sale. Shipping: Aurora & Athena coordinates professional, insured shipping for every purchase through vetted logistics partners: packing, transport, insurance and the export paperwork are arranged on the buyer's behalf and charged at the provider's cost. Buyers are equally welcome to collect in Barcelona or to appoint a carrier of their own. Lots are released once the total purchase price has been received. For shipments outside the EU an export licence may be required and Spanish export duties may apply to certain higher-value works; these are the buyer's responsibility. No export tax applies within the EU. Full shipping and export information is available on request. -- A wall of tall, thin trunks rises out of a band of bright green meadow and dissolves into a lilac haze; at the top the crowns break into soft patches of yellow, lime and mint against a pale pink sky. The trunks are drawn in quick strokes of white, rose and blue over the violet ground, and across the foot of the canvas a strip of the same lilac lies in the green like the reflection of the wood in standing water. Nothing is outlined: the trees exist as vertical rhythm and the light as colour. This is Wolf Kahn at the height of his mature manner. A pupil and studio assistant of Hans Hofmann in New York in the late 1940s, Kahn (1927–2020) spent the rest of his life painting the woods, barns and meadows around his farm in southern Vermont in colours no landscape painter had dared before him, keeping the motif while handling the canvas as a colour-field painter would. Stands of trees seen through atmosphere, here in violet, elsewhere in orange or magenta, were his favourite subject of the 1990s. The painting carries on the stretcher and the reverse the inventory number Kahn gave each of his canvases, year and sequence, as ‘#21A. 1994’.