Walt Kuhn

Portrait of Bert Lahr - Circus Performer - Modernism

1947

Walt Kuhn (1877-1949) He was associated with "The Eight" and with Arthur B. Davies, was a the key figure in forming the American Association of painters and Sculptors that organized the Armory Show of 1913 that introduced modernist European art to America. Kuhn was executive secretary of the Association and traveled abroad to select entries for the Armory Show. He was strongly influenced by Cezanne which is evident in many of his paintings. Like Cezanne, he destroyed many of his paintings, keeping only about a dozen a year. He was born in Brooklyn, New York and in 1900 first used the name Walt when illustrating magazines in San Francisco. He studied at the Royal Academy in Munich from 1901 to 1903 and returned to New York where he worked as a cartoonist and magazine illustrator. In the permanent collection of most major museums worldwide. His record price for a painting to date is 1.6 Million dollars.