|This biography from the Archives of AskART:| |A painter and
major organizer of the Armory Show, Walt Kuhn is perhaps best
known for his circus figure-clown depictions. They were unique
in that he treated his subjects as human beings conditioned to
specialized jobs. He also painted still lifes and some
landscapes. He was inspired and influenced by many artists, most
notably Paul Cezanne, and like Cezanne, he destroyed many of his
canvases, saving only about a dozen paintings a year.| He was
born in Brooklyn, New York in 1877 (some older sources quote
1880 as his year of birth) with the name William, but in 1900
first used the name "Walt" when illustrating magazines in San
Francisco. He studied at the Royal Academy in Munich from 1901
to 1903, and returned to New York where he worked as a
cartoonist and magazine illustrator. He was associated with "The
Eight", New York modernist painters, and with Arthur B. Davies,
was a the key figure in forming the American Association of
painters and Sculptors that organize