Metadata: Large ring binder of notes and illustrations, four small illustrated sketch/notebooks, with some loose illustrations and an etching of Erich Kahn
Collection
- Country:
- United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
- Holding institution:
- Tate Archive
- Holding institution (official language):
- Tate Archive
- Postal address:
- Tate BritainMillbankLondonUnited KingdomSW1P 4RG
- Web address:
- https://www.tate.org.uk/art/archive
- Reference number:
- TGA 201715
- Title:
- Large ring binder of notes and illustrations, four small illustrated sketch/notebooks, with some loose illustrations and an etching of Erich Kahn
- Title (official language):
- Large ring binder of notes and illustrations, four small illustrated sketch/notebooks, with some loose illustrations and an etching of Erich Kahn
- Creator/accumulator:
- Kahn, Erich
- Date(s):
- 1945/1968
- Language:
- English
- Extent:
- 1 folder
- Scope and content:
- This collection relates to German émigré painter, draughtsman and printmaker, Erich Kahn's lifelong interest in master paintings that informed his own expressionist work. The sketchbooks and illustrated notebooks were executed and notes written in 1945; 1947; 1948; 1954-55; and 1968. The texts are mostly written in German with some English words. In addition there are six loose leaf illustrations and an etching of a female nude. There is also a copy of the retrospective catalogue at the John Denham Gallery, London, 1989.Overall the material within this collection covers the period when Kahn was forty one and trying to recoup his position as a leading artist of international repute to 1968 when he was sixty four and becoming more established in the UK.
- Archival history:
- Erich Kahn thence by descent to his widow and then given to Agi Katz
- Administrative/biographical history:
- Kahn was born in Stuttgart, studied at the State School of Arts and Crafts, 1922-25 and later with Fernand Léger. He lived in Germany, until persecuted by the Nazis and later imprisoned in the Welzheim concentration camp. After fleeing Germany in 1939, he took refuge in the UK, where he was interned for a time at Hutchinson Camp, on the Isle of Man. Here, he met Kurt Schwitters and other interned cultural figures including the art historian, Klaus Hinrichsen who later became a champion of his work writing his biography, A Painter's Life and Times. On his release, largely neglected by the English art establishment and psychologically troubled, Kahn worked prolifically. He spent time drawing in the Maida Vale art studio of Paul Hamann, and with Hugo Dachinger and Walter Nessler all fellow German art émigrés. Although an isolated figure, Kahn enjoyed the support of the eminent art historian and art critic Professor J P Hodin and his work was exhibited in group shows at the Leger and Whitechapel galleries and commercially in solo exhibitions at the Redfern, Drian and Molton Galleries during the 1950s and 1960s. A posthumous retrospective exhibition as held at the John Denham Gallery in 1989. Works by Kahn are held by the Tate, the British Musuem, the Ben Uri and Tel Aviv Museum, Israel, whilst the Sintra Museum of Modern Art - The Berardo Collection Museum in Portugal contains the largest corpus of the artist's work.
- Access points: persons/families:
- Kahn, Erich
- Subject terms:
- Art
- Art--Artists
- Drawings
- Access, restrictions:
- Open
- Finding aids:
- Online catalogue.
- Yerusha Network member:
- AIM25