WOLF KAHN | WALL STREET JOURNAL

A monumental sculpture on view for only the second time ever, a painter heading in new directions, and captivating landscapes worth decoding.

WOLF KAHN

Miles McEnery Gallery, 520 West 21st Street, 30 October - 20 December 2025

Without knowing the artist, it would be hard to place the paintings of Wolf Kahn. Many of his landscapes seem particularly American, though the influence of French Impressionism peeks through the flora; his palette feels indebted to figures like Alexei Jawlensky and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner; and one detects a camaraderie with the Color Field painters. This melting pot of influences makes sense considering Kahn (1927-2020) was a German-born immigrant who spent time in England, studied with Hans Hofmann, lived for a stint in Italy, resided in New York and summered in Vermont.

At Miles McEnery Gallery, visitors are treated to a brief overview of his mid and late career through a selection of works, curated by M. Rachael Arauz, from the mid-’70s onward, which emphasizes why it is so hard to categorize Kahn. Abstraction meets landscape; painterly application meets rough-and-tumble applications. Plants are gently rendered, branches and trunks vigorously scratched in. A jumble of rectangles snaps into a rigidly composed vista of a white gate set into an earthy wall.

Kahn’s most representational works are his least interesting; it’s in the careful dissection of his elements and the revelation of what we’re looking at that the most joy is found. A sea of yellow—ocher, dandelion, goldenrod—seems to support a single tree backed by a dark vacuum, but as our eyes adjust, we realize a barn in deepest alizarin crimson dominates the scene. Elsewhere, a stripe of lemon yellow radiates against an inky background, interrupted by numerous dark patches. Looking up, we discover that these are the naked trunks of trees, their reedy, leafless tops scraping against a gray sky. Kahn’s work is many things—study in color and juxtaposition, exercise in mark-making, celebration of nature. It defies quick definition, but beautiful is as good a word as any.