Dan Yellow Kuhne (b. 1942) American, Watercolor on Paper. Rare piece of the Dog Eared Series. Framed. Dated Spring '72 bottom left. Signed bottom right. Depicts Kuhne's signature streaks of color cascading from thick bars of pigment above, like an abstract landscape. 

Condition: Commensurate with age. 

Overall Size: 29 x 37 in. 

Sight Size: 22 x 30 in. 

#4115 . 

Dan Yellow Kuhne was born William Daniel Kuhne in Oneida, New York in 1942. In 1949 his family moved to Baltimore, Maryland and he has remained there ever since. His childhood home was within a few blocks of the Baltimore Museum, which he visited frequently, and in his early twenties he was “floored” by an exhibition of German Expressionism. He later said his biggest influence was the more abstract pre-Modern work of Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), one of the most important British Romantic painters in history. He enrolled at University of Maryland, College Park in 1960, where a friend christened him “Daniello,” but the artist heard this as “Dan Yellow” and liked the moniker, using it ever since. After leaving college in 1973 he began teaching drawing at Anne Arundel Community College, working there off and on for over 40 years. He also took classes with Gene Davis, who exposed him to the works of Van Gogh, Delacroix, Pollock, and Morris Louis at the Phillips Collection and the National Gallery of Art. After his first successful show at Jacob’s Ladder Gallery in 1972, the Phillips Collection hosted a solo show of his watercolors the following year. By the late 1970s, Dan was considered the foremost descendant of the Washington Color School of Painters, with work already appearing at the Katzen Museum and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. To create his work, Kuhne first drew out his imagery in pencil. He then applied paint directly from tubes and diluted the pigment with washes to stain the surface with color. This formed “bars of pigment and attached flowing veils,” a signature style that Kuhne defined as his Dog Eared series, comprising approximately 45 canvases. His interest in strong contrasting colors and technical and structural exploration remains evident today, and starting around 2000 Kuhne shifted his primary focus to landscape paintings. Now in his 80s, Kuhne continues to work and exhibit in the D.C. area, with his most recent retrospective at Jo Fleming Contemporary Art in 2023 called “Dan Kuhne: Last of the Post-Impressionists,” funded by an Annie Award he won from Arundel County in 2022. His works are in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, University of Maryland, American University Museum, and many others. He adopted a form of radical regionalism common to many of the D.C. color painters, never showing his work outside of the Baltimore/D.C. area. This makes their appearance anywhere in the rest of the country (let alone the world) extremely exciting and rare, and affords collectors a unique opportunity to engage with a living legend.

Commensurate with age.