Preview our SPRING 2025 catalog, featuring more than 500 new books on art, photography, design, architecture, film, music and visual culture.
Walt Kuhn: American Modern
Introduction by Bridget Moore. Text by Gail Stavitsky, Ralph Sessions.
Walt Kuhn (1877–1949) is best known for his bold, modernist paintings of showgirls and circus performers. He was deeply involved with theater and the circus for much of his life, and his work was informed by years of close observation. Combining a modernist impulse with a showman’s instincts, Kuhn created portraits that penetrate the veneer of burlesque shows and circuses as well as vigorously rendered still lifes. Kuhn was one of the principal organizers of the 1913 Armory Show, and from about 1922 to 1925, he also turned theater professional, writing and directing satirical skits and pantomimes. In the late 1920s, his mature style emerged through a unique melding of modernist principles with an updated realism. This first major exhibition catalogue of Kuhn’s work in decades, timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Armory Show, brings his work back into the spotlight.
Featured image, "Roberto" (1946), is reproduced from Walt Kuhn: American Modern.
Featured image, "Chorus Captain" (1935), is by the under-recognized American painter Walt Kuhn (1877-1949), one of the primary organizers of the landmark 1913 Armory Show, which introduced European Modernism to this country via such artists as Marcel Duchamp, Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse, and brought prominence to Americans like Edward Hopper, Stuart Davis and John Marin. Though Kuhn's work can be found in most major American museum collections—primarily in the form of unorthodox portraits of show girls and circus performers—there have been very few one-person shows. In the spring, on the occasion of the 1913 Armory Show's 100th anniversary, New York's D.C. Moore Gallery righted this wrong with a "fresh look" at Kuhn, whose work was praised by Karen Rosenberg in The New York Times. "Chorus Captain" is reproduced from Walt Kuhn: American Modern. continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.75 x 11.75 in. / 100 pgs / 43 color / 11 duotone. LIST PRICE: U.S. $40.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $54 GBP £35.00 ISBN: 9780984806362 PUBLISHER: DC Moore Gallery AVAILABLE: 7/31/2013 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by DC Moore Gallery. Introduction by Bridget Moore. Text by Gail Stavitsky, Ralph Sessions.
Walt Kuhn (1877–1949) is best known for his bold, modernist paintings of showgirls and circus performers. He was deeply involved with theater and the circus for much of his life, and his work was informed by years of close observation. Combining a modernist impulse with a showman’s instincts, Kuhn created portraits that penetrate the veneer of burlesque shows and circuses as well as vigorously rendered still lifes. Kuhn was one of the principal organizers of the 1913 Armory Show, and from about 1922 to 1925, he also turned theater professional, writing and directing satirical skits and pantomimes. In the late 1920s, his mature style emerged through a unique melding of modernist principles with an updated realism. This first major exhibition catalogue of Kuhn’s work in decades, timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Armory Show, brings his work back into the spotlight.
