Brad Kahlhamer (b. 1956)
Colorado with South Dakota Trees
titled 'Colorado with South Dakota Trees' (upper right); signed and dated 'Brad Kahlhamer 2001' (lower right); signed, titled and dated 'Colorado with South Dakota Trees Brad Kahlhamer 2001' (on the reverse)
watercolour and ink on paper laid on board
22½ x 29⅞in. (57 x 76cm.)
Executed in 2001

Provenance:
Kaufmann Repetto, Milan.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

Specialist Notes:

Brad Kahlhamer works with a range of media from sculpture and painting to performance and music to explore what he refers to as the ‘third place’—a meeting point of two opposing personal histories. Of Native-American heritage, Kahlhamer was adopted by German-American parents and raised in the Midwest. While the official links to his tribal heritage were lost, the artist was still deeply influenced by the culture in his art.

In his ink and watercolour drawings of which Colorado with South Dakota Trees is a prime example, Kahlhamer fuses expressionist painting techniques with the visual history of Native American art. Taking popular cultural associations from country western and Native American rock music, the artist’s landscapes take on a pulsing energy and vitality. This is paralleled by the American bald eagle that features prominently in many of his works, which in many ways is considered a symbol for the artist himself, exploring his own personal vision of the American landscape.

His works are seen as ‘cheerfully messy, though segments of washy landscape emerge from the chaos. Colliding patches of expressionistic abstraction and scrawling cartoonlike drawings are strewn around like graffiti. The cartoon figures often have skulls or smiley faces for heads, or take the form of raw-boned maidens or wildlife like eagles and wild pigs’ (A. Wilson Lloyd, ‘Building the Story of a Life Lived Between Worlds’, in The New York Times, 13 May 2001).

Please note this lot is the property of a consumer. See H1 of the Conditions of Sale.