Kenneth Callahan

Kenneth Callahan (1905–1986) was an American painter and muralist who served as a catalyst for Northwest artists in the mid-20th century through his own painting, his work as assistant director and curator at the Seattle Art Museum, and his writings about contemporary art. Born in Eastern Washington and largely self-taught as an artist, Callahan was committed to an art that went beyond the merely illustrative. He enrolled at the University of Washington in 1924 but did not stay long. He traveled widely, absorbing influences from the different countries and cultures he experienced. His talent was recognized early; his work was included in the first Whitney Biennial exhibition in 1933 and he went on to a distinguished painting career. Callahan is identified as one of the Northwest Mystics – along with Guy Anderson, Morris Graves, and Mark Tobey, who shared a muted palette and strong interest in Asian aesthetics.

Early life

Kenneth Callahan was born in Spokane, Washington, on October 30, 1905, the fifth of seven children of John and Martha Ann Cross Callahan. He spent his growing years in the small town of Glasgow, Montana. Encouraged by his mother, he began painting watercolors at age seven.Iridescent Light: The Emergence of Northwest Art, by Deloris Tarzan Ament; University of Washington Press, 2002 In 1918 he moved with his family to Raymond, Washington, then two years later to Seattle, where he took art classes at Broadway High School. Both his parents died while he was still a teenager.

Callahan enrolled in the University of Washington, but left after two months. Moving to San Francisco, he did illustrations for a children's magazine, and, while living in low-rent apartments with other artists, had his first exposure to contemporary abstract art. At that time he was painting in a realist style inspired by Thomas Hart Benton and the artists of the Ashcan School, but he was deeply impressed by the originality of Klee, Kandinsky, and Feininger. He later told journalist Deloris Tarzan Ament, "It was the first time it occurred to me that there could be good art that I didn't like."

In 1926 Callahan had his first one-man show at San Francisco's Schwabacher-Frey Gallery; the following year he began his world travels as a ship's steward, winding up back in Seattle in 1930.

Career

In 1930 Callahan married Margaret Bundy, who was a co-editor of ''Town Crier'', a literary magazine published in Seattle between 1912 and 1937.

The Callahans developed friendships with Dr. Richard Fuller (founder of the Seattle Art Museum), Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, and other progressive-minded artists. Their home became a meeting-place for Seattle's arts community, including prominent Japanese-American artists Kenjiro Nomura and Kamekichi Tokita, and many others.

In 1933 - at age 27 - he gained national recognition with the inclusion of some of his paintings in the First Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary Art at the Whitney Museum, in New York. The same year he began his twenty-year tenure with SAM, when it opened its new building in Seattle's Volunteer Park. Over the next two decades he curated exhibitions at SAM, wrote a weekly arts column for ''The Seattle Times'', and took trips to Europe and Latin America; his main focus, however, remained his painting. He had numerous exhibitions, was commissioned to do several murals (including post office murals for the Section of Painting and Sculpture in Anacortes

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