Painting by Bob Paul Kane, Flowers (pink), c1970

Frame: 41 1/4" x 51 1/4"
Painting: 39 3/4" x 50"

Bob Paul Kane
(source: wiki) Bob Paul Kane (1937 - 2013) was an American painter known for his gestural style, vibrant colors, and festive subject matter.

Kane was born in Cleveland, Ohio. As a child he attended the Cleveland Museum School, where he was exposed to drawing and painting; and later the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1953-54. In 1955 he enrolled at Cornell University, but left a year later to pursue painting, heading to Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he met sculptor Chaim Gross.  They developed a close relationship, and Kane returned with the Gross family to New York in the fall of 1956.  At Gross’ encouragement, he studied at the Art Students League of New York, and accepted a one-year scholarship to Pratt Institute in 1958. 

At the Art Students League, Kane studied with George Grosz, and with Will Barnet, who became one of his greatest influences.  Barnets class was where Kane met Belgian student Eva Marie Honigman in 1961, whom he married three years later. Her work as a textile designer, with its bold sense of color and design, inspired him. “She is by far the greatest influence on me," Kane said. "When I first met her, her French feeling for gaiety impressed me and has become a major part of my work.

Kane is known for his synthesis of a colorful impressionist palette with a decidedly American sensibility. His works are full of lively brushwork and spontaneity, described by critic Richard J. Boyle as a fast and furious style of painting.  MoMA Curator John Elderfield notes that Kane’s paintings look back through Philip Gustons coloration and seek to pursue the brightness and freedom associated with Henri Matisse’s palette.

From Will Barnet, Kane learned structure and control of space and depth, but his most quintessential passion was for color. Barnet says of Kane: The very first time I saw Bob Kane's work, I recognized his unique talent. His painting had an energy and an explosive force. This combined with an underlined passion for nature in all its elements has dominated his work throughout his career.

Kane was inspired by his visits to beach towns in the Mediterranean, where he soaked up sensuous subject matter with intense light and color. He often painted with watercolors on location, then produced oil paintings back in his New York studio. On painting en plein air, Kane says, I have been lucky in my studios. My one in Rome was a café across from the Pantheon, and in Venice a gondoliere offered me his gondola when he was not using it.

His travels took him to France, Italy, Spain, Greece, and Morocco, specifically cities such as Nice, Positano, Naples, Cannes, and Venice.  Visits to Nices Marche aux Fleurs, for instance, inspired his flower still lifes.

On his approach, Kane says, “I have tried to eliminate a vase sitting on a table, but rather make the flowers surround you as in a garden yet maintaining the logic of the picture plane and structure, and this concept is with me in all my compositions. The problem for the figurative painter, I believe, is to capture the wildness of abstraction and use it to give life to the objects he loves

Good condition overall