?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
WALT KUHN (1877-1949) Reclining Model.
Pen and ink on Arches, 1929. 278x405 mm; 11x16 inches. Signed and dated, lower right.
Provenance Hobe Sound Galleries North, Portland, Maine (label). Midtown Payson Galleries, New York (label). Purchased from the above by private collector, New York, 1994. Thence by descent to current owner, New York.
Born in Red Hook, Brooklyn, Walt Kuhn took art classes at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and then worked as an illustrator. He met John Sloan and Robert Henri through his work as an illustrator and helped them organize the Exhibition of Independent Artists in April 1910. He then co-founded the Association of American Painters and Sculptors who organized the Armory Show and oversaw finding European artists to participate. He traveled throughout Europe with Arthur B. Davies and Walter Pach to recruit European avant-garde artists for the Armory Show, introducing Americans to modern art.
As an artist he embraced a variety of modern styles, including Cubism and Fauvism, before developing his own style of painting single figures against dark backgrounds with a psychological and emotional intensity. He often depicted performers—clowns, burlesque dances and acrobats—referencing his lifelong interest in performance and theater.
