How can I buy a work by Bill Kohn?

Bruno David Gallery handles the sale of available works by Bill Kohn. For prices and availability, email info@brunodavidgallery.com or call +1 314 696 2377.

Where can I see work by Bill Kohn in person?

At Bruno David Gallery, 7513 Forsyth Boulevard, Saint Louis, Missouri 63105, during public hours or by appointment. His work is also in the collections of Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Saint Louis Art Museum and Springfield Art Museum.

What did Bill Kohn make?

Large, brightly colored acrylic paintings, developed in the studio from on-site drawings and watercolors, of places he traveled to and studied, from Andalusia, Oaxaca and India to the buildings of St. Louis’s Grand Center, pushed toward abstraction through color, geometry and steep perspective.

Has Bill Kohn had an exhibition at Bruno David Gallery?

Yes. Monumental Paintings (11 October to 26 October 2013); Journey (17 November to 16 December 2006) are among his exhibitions at the gallery. Catalogues can be read in the gallery’s Publications library at brunodavidgallery.com/publications.

Bill Kohn

Bill Kohn (1931–2004) was a St. Louis-based painter who made large, brightly colored paintings of places he traveled to and studied. His subjects included small towns in Andalusia, the pyramids of Oaxaca, the fortress of Jaisalmer in India, Brunelleschi’s Duomo in Florence, the bridges of Paris, Machu Picchu, the Grand Canyon, Chicago and St. Louis. Working from observation, he pushed buildings and landscapes toward abstraction through saturated color, geometry and steep perspectives.

Kohn made pencil drawings and watercolors on site and developed subjects in the studio as acrylics on canvas, at times more than fifteen feet long. He also studied each place’s history, literature and music. From 2002 until his death he worked on the Grand Center Series, depicting historic and modern buildings around Grand Boulevard in St. Louis, among them the Masonic Temple and the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts. He saw the district as a landscape that “embodies forces of creativity, decay, restoration, preservation, learning and innovation.”

A native of University City, Missouri, Kohn earned a bachelor’s degree in painting from Washington University in St. Louis in 1953, studied printmaking with Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17 in Paris and received a master of arts from Mills College in Oakland, California, in 1960. He joined the Washington University School of Art faculty in 1963 and taught there for more than three decades, becoming professor emeritus of painting. A Fulbright grant took him to India in 1965–66, and sabbaticals later took him to Guadalajara, Seville and Oaxaca. He died in St. Louis on 13 November 2004.

Kohn had one-person exhibitions at the Saint Louis Art Museum, the University of Baroda in India and the Alcázar in Seville. In 2002 he had a retrospective at the Des Lee Gallery in St. Louis and received the Missouri Arts Award. His work is in collections including the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, the Saint Louis Art Museum and the Springfield Art Museum. Bruno David Gallery presented Journey, from the Grand Center Series, in 2006, gouaches from the series in 2011 and Monumental Paintings in 2013. The gallery publishes catalogues of his work and represents the Bill Kohn Estate.

→ Read the Grand Center Series catalogue

→ Read the Journey catalogue

→ Inquire