Summertime

Summertime
Edmund Kuehn
August 18, 1916 - June 12, 2011
Artist Biography
Acquisition Number: 2009.1
Medium: Watercolor on paper
Size: 15" x 20"
Date: 1954
Credit: Margretta Bockius Wilson Fund

"As a painter I am interested in both the seen and the unseen. To express the things of the visible world, I use complex forms divided by light or shade." -Edmund Kuehn As an abstract, or semi-abstract artist, Kuehn was able to explore a great range of possibilities and transcend details. Color is key to his works; it simultaneously creates spatial tension and evokes emotion. His energetic lines simultaneously create a sense of movement as well as form. Here Kuehn creates the visual poetry of a garden, emotionally resonant long after one's initial experience of it. Kuehn spent the majority of his life in Columbus, Ohio, as an artist and one of the earliest curators of the Columbus Museum of Art. It is therefore not far-fetched to think that this summer scene is in Columbus, especially since it depicts Kuehn’s family, including his mother and father, in an orchard.