| Walt Kuhn | ||
| Birth Date: October 27, 1877 |
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| Death Date: July 13, 1949 Artist Gallery |
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| Walt Kuhn was born in Brooklyn, New York City. At 15, Kuhn sold his first drawings to a magazine and signed his name “Walt”. In 1893, he enrolled in art classes at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. Kuhn, a professional bicycle racer in the 1890s, moved in 1899 to San Francisco, with only $60.00 in his pocket, where he worked as a cartoonist. His extensive travels in the western United State are reflected in his work. He later studied art, informally in Paris, then contributed cartoons to Life, Puck, Judge and newspapers in New York City. In 1903 his first illustrations were completed for LIFE magazine.
Kuhn was also a consulting architect, set designer, and art promoter. As secretary of the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, he helped organize the Armory Show.
After 1925 Kuhn devoted himself to painting, translating an early love of the circus and the theatre into simple and austere paintings of clowns, showgirls and acrobats. His health made a turn for the worse when he almost died from a duodenal ulcer. After recovery, he became an instructor at the Art Students League. He also completed a commission for the Union Pacific Railroad.
By the 1940s, Kuhn’s behavior began to take on unsound characteristics. He became increasingly distant, and when the Ringling Brothers Circus was in town, he attended night after night. In 1948, Walt Kuhn was institutionalized, and on July 13, 1949 he died suddenly from a perforated ulcer.
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