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Featuring an Eclectic Array of Primarily 20th Century Artwork

Walter Egel Kuhlman

Abstract #10Abstract #10 by Walter Egel Kuhlman, 1948

The Earl of B

The Earl of B by Walter Egel Kuhlman, 1975

Homage to John Gardner, Grendel

Homage to John Gardner, Grendel by Walter Egel Kuhlman, 1984

Sailing in the Fog by Walter Egel Kuhlman, 1980, Monotype with Mixed Media additions, 10×13

Walter Kuhlman was one of the leading pioneers in the Abstract Expressionist school of painting, a school hailed by historians, critics and artists as “the triumph of American art.” Although the movement had its roots in the legendary California School of Fine Arts (now known as the San Francisco Art Institute) Kuhlman’s own artistic roots began in the Midwest and were nurtured in places as diverse as New Mexico and Paris, Louisiana and the Virgin Islands.

Walter Kuhlman was born in St. Paul Minnesota in 1918, the son of poor Danish immigrants who sent him at age six to live with an aunt in Denmark. “I learned to kiss ladies’ hands, but I rebelled at white gloves and dancing class,” he said. More importantly, he noted that by the end of a year “all that was Nordic was deep within me” — and eventually within his art. That art had already become central in his life. He later observed that he had painted ever since he could remember. When his father became ill, Kuhlman, although still quite young, struggled to earn money to help support the household and remarked that art had become his “true home — a place of being.”

Between 1936 and 1939, Kuhlman attended the St. Paul School of Fine Art, where he was a student of landscape painter Cameron Booth, whom he credits with teaching him the importance of structure in art. Booth was also something of a role model. Kuhlman later remarked: “He taught me about gentleness and humility. I think I was the son he never had.”

After receiving his BA from the University of Minnesota, and following a solo exhibition at the Walker Art Center in 1940, Kuhlman himself joined the faculty of the St. Paul School of Art. But two years later, at the height of World War II, the committed pacifist was drafted into the US Navy. Mercifully assigned to the medical corps as an illustrator, he later reflected, “I felt I’d rather save people than kill them. I saw what was left of men who came back in operating rooms and wards for three bloody years. It’s still in me.” This profound and traumatic experience is clearly reflected in much of his work from that period.

Following the war, Kuhlman enrolled at Tulane University in New Orleans and immersed himself in classical literature, jazz, the mysteries of masks and Mardi Gras, the Bayou culture, and Cajun cooking. Six months later he took off for the Virgin Islands with his wife Nora, a WAVE he’d met in the service. On the islands, he discovered life could be lived cheaply with one notable exception. “Paint,” he said, “cost more than anything.” This didn’t stop him from painting non-stop for an entire year, channeling the expressive colors, light, and topography of the island. It was scuba diving that provided his most striking inspirations: “It gave me turquoise, yellows and reds you couldn’t believe. Also fearsome underwater forms; the ocean had its own terrors.” Like Scandinavia and New Orleans, all these experiences became part of his ever-expanding internal palette.

Then in 1948 fate delivered an invitation that would launch a new chapter in Kuhlman’s life, and in the annals of art history. He received a call from former St. Paul classmate Frank Lobdell asking him to come to Sausalito, where Lobdell was living while attending the California School of Fine Arts. Kuhlman, who had once vowed after an exhilarating ride on a cable car, to someday live near San Francisco, accepted. Lobdell had proclaimed there was “nothing like” the California School of Fine Arts and Kuhlman later stated, “he was right.”

It was here, during the school’s “golden years,” that an experimental and highly dynamic program was taking life, under the influential leadership of the CSFA’s Director, Douglas MacAgy. The faculty he recruited included luminaries such as Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Elmer Bischoff and David Park. Together they charted new territory in 20th century art and encouraged their students to do the same. Simultaneously, on the East coast, artists such as Jackson Pollack, Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning, with support of the New York media, had begun to establish the United States as the leader of the international art world.

Kuhlman studied at the school until 1950, becoming a member of the “Sausalito Six” – a ground-breaking group of young painters exploring the newly emerging “abstract expressionism.” The other five were Richard Diebenkorn, Frank Lobdell, George Stillman, John Hultberg, and James Budd Dixon. Kuhlman soon found himself an integral part of a period of San Francisco art history that, together with the work of innovative New York artists, thrust the United States into a prominent and vital position in the art world. “We were a great Sausalito group, Frank, Dick Diebenkorn, John Hultberg and me,” remembered Kuhlman. “And across the Golden Gate Bridge, there was Bud Dixon, Jack Jefferson and Pete Shoemaker – we all had a ball!” He described the school as a 24-hour “sanctuary,” where apprentices learned their craft from hard working, cutting edge artists, and filled their free time with wine, jazz and poetry.

Most serious artists eventually find their way to Paris, and Kuhlman was no exception. In 1950 he and Lobdell took advantage of their final year of G.I. benefits by renting a studio at the Academie de le Grande Chaumiere. A year later they exhibited their work in the celebrated “Salon de Mai” show at the Petit Palais – the first exhibit of American Abstract Expressionist paintings in Europe. The Parisian critics were shocked, describing the exhibit as “brutish, the work of Fauvists” (beasts). Nevertheless, Kuhlman was greatly influenced by France and would later return to Paris.

Unlike the Parisians, Americans immediately recognized the bold originality of the Abstract Expressionism movement. Dr. Grace Morley, the founder and Director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, recommended Kuhlman’s name for the famous international Chicago Graham Fellowship, intended for residency costs and access to artistic luminaries of the times, including painters, architects and critics. “I got $10,000 – a pile back then,” said Kuhlman, “and mixed with some of the best minds anywhere.” These included people like Buckminster Fuller, Mies Van der Rohe and French art critic Jean Leymarie.” He later praised Dr. Morley and Jermayne MacAgy of the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, as two of the most supportive people in his career.

After Chicago, the University of Mexico offered Kuhlman a permanent position on its Arts faculty. Like most artists, he was grateful for the chance of a steady income and accepted the offer, quitting the Bay Area art scene for five years. When he returned, it was to a building and a life that would influence local artists for years to come.

In 1955, Kuhlman became the first artist to rent space in Sausalito’s now historic Industrial Center Building. It was an area he found rich in meaning and legacy, observing that “they built and launched World War II liberty ships from that long, wooden piece of history on Richardson Bay.” Kuhlman personally built his own house in the Sausalito hills, had a son, and painted, painted, and painted. His presence in the Industrial Center Building became a model for the no-nonsense, industrious pursuit of the craft of producing art. The building began to fill with other artists, launching a tradition that continues to this day.

In that building, Kuhlman’s artistry continued to deepen and expand. In 1959 “the figure” emerged in his work and remained a central theme from then on. Unlike many Bay Area figurative painters of the 60’s, Kuhlman’s figures – animals, people, and incarnations which are neither — are always representative of psychological aspects of the human condition. They’re isolated yet self-possessed, sometimes demonic – but always life affirming. In the last 20 years, while continuing to paint with oil on canvas, Kuhlman also created a large and impressive body of monotypes, produced through a multi-step and painstaking process. First he loosely applied paint onto a sheet of metal, which he then put through a printing press. This transferred the image to a sheet of paper, which then became the environment for pastel overlays that reveal the content of the work created. “What happens in this process,” said Kuhlman “is simply magic.”

During the Sausalito years, Kuhlman married his second wife, New York writer Tulip Chestman, and continued to experiment with new art forms. He also began to more broadly share his knowledge and techniques, accepting teaching positions in numerous schools, including: the California School of Fine Arts, Stanford University, Santa Clara University, University of New Mexico, and University of Michigan. He retired as a tenured Professor of Art from Sonoma State University, after mentoring and influencing hundreds of artists of future generations. Awards and recognition for his work include: lifetime membership in the National Academy of Design; fellowships from the Tiffany Foundation, the Cummington Foundation and the Graham Foundation; Outstanding California Working Artist and Teacher Award from the California Arts Council; and placement on the “legends” roster of the San Francisco Art Institute on the occasion of its 125th anniversary.

Kuhlman’s work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, dating back to his first group exhibition at the 1939 New York World’s Fair where Douglas Phillips (The Phillips Collection, Washington DC) personally purchased “Street Scene, 1938.” He’s represented in the permanent collections of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Phillips Collection, the San Francisco MOMA, the Oakland Museum, the New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts, the Cleveland Museum, the Worcester Art Museum, the National Museums of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the National Museum of American Art, and the British Museum. There are Kuhlmans in many other outstanding public and private collections.

Walter Kuhlman was a prodigious and dedicated painter, with a provocative message. Both his abstract expressionist, and later his figurative and semi-figurative works, present a paradox. They’re communicative yet mysterious, powerful yet ephemeral, detached and yet intensely personal. Kuhlman’s work projects a strong feeling of time and place, filtered through subjective memory. His paintings, as well as his monotypes, explore death and isolation, the conflict within duality, and earth as eternal presence. Said Kenneth Baker, art critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, “He practiced an abstract style of ragged forms and jarring colors that evolved into a softer but equally enigmatic figurative manner with Symbolist undertones.”

In his later years, Walter Kuhlman was often seen walking along Richardson Bay with Nino, his black lab, savoring the beauty and peaceful atmosphere of the harbor, a moving figure on the canvas of his choice. In his studio, he talked with, mentored and enjoyed the frequent company of fellow artists. When asked directly about the meaning of any of his broad-ranging work he’d say, “How do I know? I just do it. If I could talk about it, I wouldn’t need to paint it.”

Walter Kuhlman died March 20, 2009. Friends and family gathered to toast and remember him at his studio May 16, 2009.

- From Walter Kuhlman Official Website

More information on this artist will be coming soon!