Bernard A. Kohn

(1905 – 1989)

Bernard A. Kohn was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA on 21^st November 1905.  He died on 21^st December 1989 in Philadelphia.  He attended Central High School in Philadelphia as well as the University of Pennsylvania.  Kohn worked from 1929 until 1970 as a director, co-owner and vice president of Elkan –Vogel music publishers, a prominent Philadelphia music publishing house that eventually.merged with the Theodore Presser Co.  He was very active in the Music Pubishers Association, having served for many years as their international representative as well as serving as president for a number of years.  He spoke fluent French and enjoyed representing the French music publishers in America.  He worked very closely with his opposite number in London, Pauline Wood of United Music Publishers, Ltd.

In 1932 he married Jane Weil from whom he was divorced in 1959; he had two sons, Robert, who lives in Seattle, Washington, and Richard, who sadly died in 1959.  In 1960 he was re-married to Pauline Weil Bendiner.

In the early 1940s he developed an interest in painting and attended the Cheltenham Art Center where he studied with Morris Blackburn, a well-recognised Philadelphia artist and printmaker.  In the ‘50s he taught in the evenings at the Cheltenham Adult School.  He was known both as a print-maker and painter.  He worked chiefly in wood engraving and serigraphy, i.e., silk-screen printing; he also made a large number of gouaches, drawings and watercolours.

Kohn was as devoted to his work as an artist as he was to his music publishing career.  He worked most evenings and at weekends in his studio, first in a room in his home and later in a double garage attached to his home which he and his wife converted.  One long wall of his studio was lined with bookshelves.  Here he kept his cherished books of poetry and art as well as many other works.  These books were frequently inspirations to him and he created works inspired by e.e. cummings, Wallace Stevens and St. John Perse as well as the Bible.

He also combined his work as a music publisher with his art by creating art to be published with the music, especially as covers.  Kohn was fascinated by the interplay and interrelationship of different art forms.  His work was frequently inspired by rhythm and movement from dance, music  and poetry and  he combined them all in his work.

Two other loves of Kohn’s which were inspirational to his work were paper, especially hand-made papers, and travel.  Throughout the 1950s Kohn was frequently in touch with the American papermaker, Douglass Howell, who supplied him with specially made handmade paper.  In 1966 Kohn and his wife travelled around the world; it was especially in the Far East and mainly Japan where he bought paper.

Kohn was a much travelled man.  In the 1930s he lived for a time in Paris and London.  Travel being much more restricted in the 1940s, due to WWII, he travelled more in the United States and Mexico.  However, in 1946, he received special permissions and visas to allow him to travel to Europe, especially war-torn France and England again to re-establish relationships and support his impoverished friends and colleagues. In the 1950s he returned to Europe as a tourist and artist.  In the 1960s he traveled frequently to Europe, occasionally to Mexico and South America as well as around the world.  After his retirement from the music publishing world in 1970, he and his wife frequently travelled to London to visit their growing family and departed from there to visit many parts of North Africa and Europe.

On each of these trips, Kohn always had numerous sketchbooks with him.  Whatever caught his eye, he would find a bench, rock or potted plant and perch to sketch whatever it was, such as the ancient bridge at Mostar, the cliffs of Cornwall or the rose window at Chartres.  Everyone gathered round to watch and everyone would wait in anticipation.

Bernard A. Kohn was a shy, generous and sensitive man who shared his enlightenment for the arts through his works.  He exhibited widely in the United States, especially in the Philadelphia area.   I hope you enjoy his pleasure at expressing the interrelationship and interplay of the arts.