Max Kahn
Encyclopedia
Max Kahn was a lithographer, painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

 and sculptor born in Slonim
Slonim
Slonim is a city in Hrodna Voblast, Belarus, capital of the Slonim District. It is located at the junction of the Shchara and Isa rivers, 143 km southeast of Hrodna. The population in 2008 was 50,800.-Etymology and historical names:...

, Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...

 in 1902. He worked until age 100 and died in 2005 at the age of 103. He was one of a small group of lithographers in the late 1940s and 1950s demonstrating the self-expressive qualities of the medium.

Life and work

Max Kahn went to the USA in 1907 studying art at Bradley University
Bradley University
Bradley University, founded in 1897, is a private, co-educational university located in Peoria, Illinois. It is a small institution with an enrollment of approximately 6,100 undergraduate and postgraduate students and a full-time faculty of approximately 350....

, went to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 in 1926-1928, where he studied primarily sculpture with Charles Despiau
Charles Despiau
Charles Despiau was a French sculptor.Despiau was born at Mont-de-Marsan, Landes and attended first the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs and later the Ecole des Beaux Arts...

 and Antoine Bourdelle
Antoine Bourdelle
Antoine Bourdelle , originally Émile Antoine Bourdelle, was an influential and prolific French sculptor, painter, and teacher.-Career:...

 and drawing with Othon Friesz
Othon Friesz
Achille-Émile Othon Friesz who later called himself just Othon Friesz , a native of Le Havre, was a French artist of the Fauvist movement....

 at the Academy Suede West on the Rive Droite
Rive Droite
La Rive Droite is most associated with the river Seine in central Paris. Here the river flows roughly westwards, cutting the city into two: looking downstream, the northern bank is to the right, and the southern bank is to the left....

. In 1935 he met Eleanor Coen
Eleanor Coen
Eleanor Coen established her art career during the great depression. In the Works Progress Administration Federal Arts Project she and her husband Max Kahn helped forge a tradition of twentieth century color lithography and painting. She was born in 1916 in Normal, Illinois...

, a lithographer and painter, who he later married. They both went to the Chicago Art Institute where he studied and later taught.

In 1939 Kahn taught a four week course at the Herron School of Art
Herron School of Art
Herron School of Art and Design, a school of Indiana University, was ranked 45th overall by U.S. News and World Report among graduate schools of fine arts in 2008....

. Eleanor Coen was on the WPA Federal Arts project
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...

 from 1939-1940. and both she and Kahn were registered WPA artists. From the 1930s up to early 1940 Kahn was the head of Chicago's WPA Art Print Department with Eleanor Coen at the Art Institute of Chicago. One of their WPA murals, painted in 1940, was discovered and restored in the 1990s. In 1941 after Eleanor won a traveling fellowship they went to San Miguel de Allende
San Miguel de Allende
San Miguel de Allende is a city and municipality located in the far eastern part of the state of Guanajuato in central Mexico. It is 274 km from Mexico City and 97 km from the state capital of Guanajuato...

 in Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

. Max set up the printmaking studio and taught printmaking at the Universitaria de Bellas Artes, which had recently opened. The school is now a national monument. Political prints collected by Kahn and Coen while in Mexico were exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in 2006. In 1942 after war started, Max and Eleanor went back to the USA where they got married. In the summer of 1942 they taught at Oxbow Summer School of painting at Saugatuck
Saugatuck, Michigan
Saugatuck is a city in Allegan County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 925 at the 2010 census. The city is within Saugatuck Township, but is administratively autonomous....

 where Francis Chapin ran the summer school. In 1944 when Francis Chapin
Francis Chapin
Francis W. Chapin was an American artist. His works included both watercolors and oil paintings of landscapes and portraits....

 retired from the Art Institute he recommended Max to the job teaching Lithography which he did into the 60's.

Carl Zigrosser, a friend of Carl Shnewind, the curator
Curator
A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...

 of the Art Institute encouraged Max to show his prints at Weyhe Gallery in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, which specialized in exhibiting prints. This show in 1946 was the first large one man show of color lithographs in this country. It was a very successful show from which the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

 in New York bought several of his lithographs. His work is internationally collected and is now handled at Corbett vs. Dempsey gallery in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

.
See www.maxkahn.com for more information.

His works were shown in group exhibitions:
  • 1939: Whitney Museum of American Art
    Whitney Museum of American Art
    The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...

    ; Art Institute of Chicago
    Art Institute of Chicago
    The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...

    ; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
    Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
    The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is a museum and art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1805 and is the oldest art museum and school in the United States. The academy's museum is internationally known for its collections of 19th and 20th century American paintings,...

  • 1939: World's Fair
    World's Fair
    World's fair, World fair, Universal Exposition, and World Expo are various large public exhibitions held in different parts of the world. The first Expo was held in The Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London, United Kingdom, in 1851, under the title "Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All...

    , New York
    New York
    New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

  • 1947-1951, 1958, 1960: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Annuals
  • 1947, 1959: Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.
    Washington, D.C.
    Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....


His work is held in the collections of the Illinois State Museum
Illinois State Museum
The Illinois State Museum is the official museum of the natural history of the U.S. state of Illinois. The headquarters museum is located on Spring and Edwards Streets, one block southwest of the Illinois State Capitol, in Springfield, the state capital...

, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, comprising the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in Golden Gate Park and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, is the largest public arts institution in the city of San Francisco and one of the largest art museums in California.-External...

 and the National Gallery of Canada
National Gallery of Canada
The National Gallery of Canada , located in the capital city Ottawa, Ontario, is one of Canada's premier art galleries.The Gallery is now housed in a glass and granite building on Sussex Drive with a notable view of the Canadian Parliament buildings on Parliament Hill. The acclaimed structure was...

.
The Art Institute of Chicago

Books

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