Walt Kuhn
Walt Kuhn
1877 - 1949
American painter, illustrator and lithographer. As an organizer of the ARMORY SHOW (1913) alongside Arthur B. Davies, he played an integral role in unveiling European modernism to the USA. While he painted landscapes of Maine, Cézanne-inspired still lifes and a series based on the American West, his expressive portraits of circus and vaudeville performers remain his best-known works.
In 1901, he trained at the Académie Colarossi in Paris, but soon transferred to the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich where he studied under Barbizon painter Heinrich von Zügel (1850–1941) until 1903. Upon returning to New York in 1903, he worked as an illustrator for publications such as Life and Puck, exhibited at the Salmagundi Club (1905) and organized artists’ balls for the Kit Kat Club. Working in an Impressionist style, he participated with Robert Henri in the Exhibition of Independent Artists (1910).
A year later, Kuhn assisted in founding the ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN PAINTERS AND SCULPTORS (1911–13). As the association’s executive secretary, he traveled to Europe in 1912 to assemble the faction of European artists to be included in the Armory Show. The exhibition was a succès de scandale that signaled a rebellion against the academic tradition and the arrival of modernism in the USA. Kuhn later recounted these events in his pamphlet The Story of the Armory Show (New York, 1938). In the years following the exhibition, Kuhn experimented in Cubist, Fauvist and Expressionist styles.
Around 1928, his lifelong passion for and frequent employment in the theatrical arts found its way into his paintings. With precedents in 18th-century French commedia dell’arte paintings, The White Clown (1929; Washington, DC, N.G.A.) is characteristic of his intimate portraits of clowns, acrobats and chorus girls. Kuhn shared a kinship with the performer–models he depicted and painted them with an unparalleled sense of dignity. In Plumes (1931; Washington, DC, Phillips Col.), a female performer’s expression contrasts sharply with her ornate feathered headdress; no amount of makeup or costume could conceal the weariness expressed in her eyes. Kuhn’s later paintings often feature single figures painted in bold colors against stark backdrops. He continued to produce these themed works throughout the 1930s and 1940s. [Danielle Peltakian. "Kuhn, Walt." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 9, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T2213928.]
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French, 1864 - 1901
