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Kenneth Callahan Painter American (Spokane, Washington, 1905 - 1986) View objects by this artist.

Kenneth Callahan was born in Spokane, Washington in 1907. His artist's skills were largely self-taught. He traveled extensively throughout the United States, Europe, Central America, and Mexico. He taught privately and as a visiting artist at several institutions in the United States. Among his commissions are murals in the Marine Hospital in Seattle, post offices in Centralia and Anacortes, Washington, and the Washington State Library in Olympia. Callahan was a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship (1954). His works can be found in collections at Chicago Art Institute, University of Michigan, University of Nebraska, Washington State University, University of Washington, Seattle Art Museum, and the Portland Art Museum.

Source: http://borworld.usbr.gov/art/biocalla.htm

Another member of the Northwest School of Painting was Kenneth Callahan (1905-1986). Less flamboyant in his lifestyle, Callahan has perhaps not commanded as much popular attention as Morris Graves, but he was equally important. Along with Graves, he was dubbed a "Mystic Painter of the Northwest" in the 1953 Life magazine article that featured, besides Graves and Callahan, two other painters of the Northwest scene, Mark Tobey and Guy Anderson. Linking Callahan's landscapes to the human condition, the writer saw his "turbulent clouds" as symbols of  "the unending struggle of humanity," while the "rocky slabs below" became "the social bonds and customs imprisoning men." "Mystic Painter" was not a title Callahan especially cared for, but it was not new. The New York critics had first used it some years earlier, in 1946, to describe Callahan's first one-man show, at the American British Art Center in New York City; it stuck, becoming, in effect, his epithet. That show also marked the beginning of what is now called Callahan's "definitive style."
In 1934, more than a decade before the New York show and two decades before the Life article. Callahan was then living in Seattle with his wife, writer Margaret Bundy, whom he had married in 1930.  Behind him were some two years as a ship's steward traveling to and from the Far East and Europe, and six months' residence in Mexico where he knew many of the Mexican painters, including Jose Orozco and Rufino Tamayo.  Callahan had also already had two one-man shows; one in San Francisco and one in Seattle and was exhibiting regularly in Northwest regional exhibits. In 1933, he [participated] in the Whitney Museum of American Art First Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary Art. He was also writing for various local and national publications and had begun what would become a 20-year curatorial association with the Seattle Art Museum.

Source:
M. Therese Southgate, MD Journal of the American Medical Association.
vol. 281 no. 9,  March 3, 1999


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