By Bruce Sloane S(HH.ial to the Rappahannock News High

By Bruce Sloane

S(HH.ial to the Rappahannock News

High in the hills of the Blue Ridge mountains, the innovative sculptures and drawings of Robert E. Kuhn have been shrouded in obscurity for more than 30 years. Now, through the efforts of his son, Nathan Kuhn, the almost forgotten works of his father are once again available for public viewing at the new Toyy-Kuhn Fine Art Gallery on Gay Street in Little Washington.

Robert E. Kuhn was born in 1917 in Grand Rapids, Mich., and trained at the Art Institute of Chicago. After studying for several years in Mexico, he moved to the Washington, D.C., area where he established himself in the late 1940s as one of the few American sculptors who worked in wood and welded steel.

During the 1950s and 1960s he gained national acclaim for his lyrical and figurative welded steel sculptures of American life. During his lifetime he had 28 one-man shows and was the recipient of almost 80 awards and prizes.

But Kuhn did not measure his worth through established institutions and the accolades of others. In 1967 he removed himself from the art world, where in pursuit of personal freedom he retired to Tanner Ridge in Stanley, Va., to work in seclusion until his death in 2000.

Following his father’s death, Nathan Kuhn moved to Tanner Ridge to care for the estate and artworks. Nathan is an artist and musician in his own right, who also goes by the name Denny Toyy.

He opened the Toyy-Kuhn Fine Art Gallery a few weeks ago upstairs in the Peter Kramer Building at the corner of Gay and Jett Streets to exhibit the work of both father and son, the latest addition to some two-score artists and galleries in Rappahannock County.

Greeting visitors in the downstairs lobby is Toyy’s pop art sculpture, “Ruler Machine/Public Work Series No. IV,” (1985, revised 2003) an imposing seven-and-a-half-foottall whimsical painted wood creation. Be sure to examine the rear

See GALLERY, Page B10