The son of Danish immigrant parents, Walter Kuhlman was born November 16, 1918 in St. Paul, Minnesota. He died March 20, 2009 in San Rafael, California.
When Walt was only six, his mother sent him to live with his aunt in Denmark. Says Kuhlman, “I learned to kiss ladies’ hands, but I rebelled at white gloves and dancing class. At the end of a year, all that was Nordic was deep within me.”
“My parents were poor and when I was still quite young, my father became ill. It was always a struggle to bring money into the house to help support them. Art, for me, was a place of being – my true home. I have painted ever since I can remember.”
Kuhlman graduated from the University of Minnesota, and studied with Cameron Boothe at the St. Paul School of Art for four years. “Cam taught me the importance of structure in art. He also taught me about gentleness and humility. I think I was the son he never had.”
Kuhlman’s early works were landscapes; the poetry of the American scene. However, they project strong feelings of isolation and mystery, and were abstract in concept. All harbingers of a mature style to come.
In 1943, Kulhman joined the Navy and served as medical illustrator in the Hospital Corps. “I felt I’d rather save people than kill them. I saw what was left of the men who came back, in operating rooms and wards, for three bloody years. It’s still in me.”
When his discharge papers came, Kuhlman enrolled at Tulane University and buried himself in classical literature, New Orleans jazz, the mysteries of masks and Mardi Gras, the Bayou and Cajun cooking.
“Six months of that and I took off with my wife, Nora, a Navy Wave I met in the service. I explored paint in the Virgin Islands and worked non-stop for a year. Paints cost more than anything; everything else was cheap. Scuba diving gave me turquoise, yellows and reds you couldn’t believe. Also fearsome underwater forms; the ocean had its own terrors.”
“During the war, I rode on a cable car and swore that if I ever got out alive, I’d live in or near San Francisco. When I got back from the islands, Frank Lobdell called from Sausalito where he lived and asked me to come out. He’s a Minnesotan, too, and we both went to the St. Paul School of Art. He said he was studying at the California School of Fine Arts and there was nothing like it. He was right.”