Description:

Evan Lawrence Keehn
Pennsylvania, Maryland, California, (1931 - 2015)
Jr. High School Girl, c. 1957
oil on panel
Unsigned.

Exhibited: The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Biography from the Archives of askART: Evan Lawrence Keehn, painter and antiquarian, died at the age of 83 on June 17, 2015 at the VA hospital in North Hills, CA.

Keehn was born on August 6, 1931 in Pottsville, a coal-mining town in central eastern Pennsylvania, where he lived until he finished high school.

After returning from military service in Europe, Keehn studied at the Maryland Institute of Art in Baltimore, MD. There he learned the techniques of the Old Masters from Jacques Maroger who had been Conservateur at the Louvre Museum in Paris before World War Two.

As a figurative painter, Keehn was one of the famous "Six Young Realists of Baltimore" all products of the Maryland Institute of Art, who together countered the abstract expressionist movement and organized their own gallery.

A painter of the Social-Realist School of Reginald Marsh (who later became a friend of his), Keehn became a fixture of the Baltimore art and counterculture scene from the Sixties through the mid-Seventies.

During his time in Baltimore, Keehn had a patron, Dr. Mason Faulconer Lord, who supported him for a while and commissioned Keehn to paint two murals for Emanual Episcopal Church in Baltimore, one of the Adoration of the Baby Jesus and the other of Christ's Crucifixion. This work was dedicated in 1963.

During the later Sixties, Keehn joined the Hippie movement and his art moved into what he called a "mythological phase", with many drawings inspired by or done during Kundalini Yoga trance states. He also dabbled in poetry, drew political satires for the local underground paper, Dragonseed, and later worked for a Baltimore alternative weekly.

In his late years, he stopped painting and carved out a living as an antiquarian book and print scout in Washington DC and later in Philadelphia, scouring book auctions for re-sellable engravings.

He was married for several years in the Sixties, and he and his wife, Linda, had two children, Jason and Elissa.

Evan Lawrence Keehn, painter and antiquarian, died at the age of 83 on June 17, 2015 at the VA hospital in North Hills, CA.

This information has been provided by Pauline Keehn, the artist's sister, with input from the artist's son Jason Keehn.

  • Dimensions: 28 1/2"H x 21 1/4"W (sight), 35"H x 28"W (frame)
  • Medium: oil on panel

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April 29, 2023 11:00 AM EDT
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